The Earth's Hum

THE EARTH'S HUM

                        I. JOURNEY THROUGH THE SOUTHWEST                                           

                                    Indigo sky, morning sand painting.

                                    Valley of coral, mesquite.

                                    Breath of aromatic herbs, chokecherry juice.

                                    Thin rivers strapped around buttes, like belts;

                                    Caves of scaled creatures, dry on their ledges.

                                    Stucco, mud, dry desert sand,

                                    Windstorms, dust of faces on Second Mesa;

                                    Passage through elm forests ravaged by beetles.

                                    Rural winters, cold minds sunk in tin plates,

                                    Lost miners seeking their crevice of gold.

                                    Mirage of heat;

                                    Mirage of blue lakes among pine;

                                    Of frozen creeks covered by snow;

                                    Of stale ghost towns depressed by the howl

                                    Of wind and wolves;

                                    Mirage of light!

           

                                    Hear the earth's hum!

                                    "The world is like the vapor..."

                        II. THE DEPARTURE

                                    Without the soul his body heat flees into air.

                                    The earth has a hum he cannot hear, a voice of clay.

                                    His last murmurs are fragments of prayers

                                    Loose on his lips.

                                   

                                    The sing will last several nights.

                                                            -- C. S. Cholas

                                                            Southwest United States, 1979