SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Devreaux Baker
Mendocino Coast, Northern California.
Devreaux Baker’s awards include a finalist for the 2018 Fischer Prize in Poetry, the 2017 Joe Gouveia Outermost National Poetry Prize, the 2014 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry prize from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the 2012 Hawaii Council on Humanities International poetry Prize, the 2011 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award, and the 2010 Women’s Global Leadership Poetry Prize. She is a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Hawthornden Castle, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her published books of poetry include
Light at the Edge, Beyond the Circumstance of Sight, Red Willow People, Out of the Bones of Earth, and Hungry Ghosts.
The Grand Canyon
I have been sitting here for over six million years
turning from ocean into the mind of magma
with the thrust and pull of continental shelves
defining my body. I am filled now
with the sound of a dying river at my core
and a million cracks of lightning
carving out my features.
Humans persist in climbing into my bones
pitching tents in the caverns of my mind
making love in the open spaces of my arms
or trying to resuscitate dying marriages
in the pelvic purse of my lap.
They traverse my body during the day
but at night while they sleep I wrap my force
like a shawl of rainbow dreams around their forms
and whisper the names of trails they define me by
so I become their Bright Angel or their Hermit.
In those moments I want to hold them so close
they share my infinite solitude
and learn how to mold their bodies
into the shape of loss, so they understand
how our world is diminishing
and my abyss becoming a benediction
to the memory of water.
They come and go through the gravity of time
as fragments of supernova
shadow-dancing for a brief moment
against my walls
leaving reminders of themselves
in the cast-off objects of their lives.
Filled with their voices, I endure
long after their rafts disappear
down the veins of my body.
Listen, can you hear eagle wings opening
in the margins of my dreaming mind?