You are the lost island, reappearing.
The porpoises we once thought speechless.
You are the molten iron at the center, forgotten.
The neck of the volcano. You are the reminder.
You are the compass of the swallow. The salmon.
The eel. Mute code of the firefly.
You are the deer on the road stopping traffic,
the stare fixed between us,
spell cast through the windshield.
You are the raspberries filling the pail.
Geraniums just planted on the grave
marked 1840. You are this tending.
You are the clouds retracing maps on the forehead
of the sky. You are the scalp of earth
now frozen, now mud, now full with corn.
You are the pulse in the wrist.
You are the soil, shoveled aside,
and the ground still taking us in the end.