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Here: Poems on Place

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For Father’s Day, a little poem about my dad who taught me much about how to be present in time and place. And another poem-sketch of a favorite “here,” the place where my soul feels most at home on earth.

***

Here

“Are we there yet?”
I asked my dad on the 
long road between school days
and summer at Grandma’s house.

“We’re here!”
he always retorted,
regardless the location.

I am here now.
I am here.
I am now.
I am.

 

***

Needles Overlook, Canyonlands, Utah

“Earth. Rock. Desert. I am walking barefoot on sandstone, flesh responding to flesh. It is hot, so hot the rock threatens to burn through the calloused soles of my feet. I must quicken my pace, paying attention to where I step. For as far as I can see, the canyon country of southern Utah extends in all directions.” – Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape (written from the same vantage point where I sketched the following)

hot sandstone—my palms, undersides
of hands and feet—know you 
intimately, though I would lay
my whole body, naked,
against your smooth heat and 
rise red—underside and back—as

your skin; I walk, heels weighty, 
circumambulating like the pilgrims
at Ka’ba in Mecca, clockwise ‘round,
like the march at Jericho, marching
until I fall down and there is
no space between me and thee, no

space between you and
the layer lower—Navajo, Kayenta,
touching Wingate next to Chinle
sandwiching Moenkopi with Cutler;

and above me and around sky cuts through
my soul in blue curves, lines, jags, 
this way and that, no particular order,
dismembering me with only glances
from every direction; the sky, yes, cuts
me low so I am just one more 

layer upon Earth; maybe someday
geologists will come here and add
my name to the list: Joelle, Navajo,
Kayenta … and the wind will carve me
up more and the rain will run me
down into the Colorado and my

red blood will course as a river between
solid canyons endlessly wearing thin

***

 

How do you experience the sacredness of here? How do you remember your place in the universe, your connection to all that is?

 

Image of Needles Overlook by Joelle Chase

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