Wilderness Interface Zone

Under these clouds the earth
Has raised a monument
To herself, tier by tier, a replica
Of the stone beneath my feet.

I am stone, too–stone
And one hot wick of life
Fusing me to the first generation,
Flaring forward from me to the last.
Stone, thread, and rain

One March, Grandfather held
A forked stick by the prongs
And walked slowly back and forth
Across the lava–back and forth
In small steps and watched
The stick dip and writhe.

That was how we got our garden,
Dragging a hoe beside the string
Stretched between two sticks,
Marking rows in dust of rock.
The wick was in the seeds.
That was all–rock, thread,
And Grandfather’s water.
Days and nights came with the rock.

It is spring again.  A stone vireo
Sings his hymn from the top branch
Of brittle sage.  I touch nothing
Only watch the waiting fortress
Clad in the shadows of clouds.

When I am divided into my elements,
I will be all stone,
Except the water and the thread.

____________________________________________________________

Sandra Skouson won the Utah Arts Council prize in poetry for a book-length manuscript in 2004.  In 1996 she won the Arts Council prize for ten poems.  Her poems have appeared in Petroglyph, Ellipsis, and Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Reader. She is the mother of nine children, the grandmother of 30 really adorable grandchildren.

“Beginning to Rain: At Monument Valley” was originally titled “Another Spring.”  It was published in Petroglyph 4, 1992.

*Contest entry*