SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Kathleen Cain
Arvada, Colorado
What This Means,
Being Cottonwood
Kathleen Cain is a poet and nonfiction writer.She was an early recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts. Her book, The Cottonwood Tree: An American Champion (2007) was selected for the Nebraska 150 Book Project, in honor of 150 years of Nebraska literature. She has performed with Seth Harris's Readers' Laboratory and delights in giving Cottonwood "Walk 'n Talks" with interested readers and nature enthusiasts. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. Two of them were included in Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology, 1867-2017.
Stand near the river with your feet
slightly apart. Push your toes down
beyond the mud, below the water.
Stretch your arms and head back
deliberately, until straight lines
no longer matter—until the sky
from any angle is your desire.
Let the skin go grey and split open.
If you die a little somewhere
the wind will carve the branches back
into an alphabet
someone will try to remember
how to read. Stay this way
half a century or more, turning leaves
in the half-note tides of the air.
Inside, with that blood so slow
no one hears it, set buds for spring
by each late October. November,
December, dream what it means
being owl … or star.