From the Skin of Old Earth
A poem for monuments
IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK
From the Skin of Old Earth
The time has come for them to speak.
The time has called for their voices,
fine-tuned as they are
to echo in secret chambers,
ancient songs, to resurface.
Time plucks them from beneath old scabs,
unearths them from the dunes
and level sands.
From the skin of Old Earth,
they tremble through a second birth.
In their slumber, we harbored
Pandora’s curiosity, and yet
waited for the sand to sweep away
of its own will.
Perhaps we did not know
what riches those dormant stones
once held in forms of stories
and buried treasure.
There is nothing but room for their grandeur
in those vast spaces swallowed up,
where silence lay drowning
under clay, and new riverbeds.
The waters turned to other paths
meandering to feed new forests,
for nothing grew above the graves
of ancient gods
and ancient strays.
And now they rise
from hollow earth
in search for listeners.
For cities, like ones they left behind.
For ears to turn and hear the tales
of Old Mothers in their own tongues.
The time has come for them to speak.
The time has called for their voices.