Sep 16 2009
Poetry
Kantishna Summer
Sherbet shades of sunset
slide to the valley floor,
tree cotton floats the breeze
to mid-summer’s ground.
Oh, smell the air!
Breathe it in free
from God’s own dreams.
My life is softly settling,
the ridges and valleys, lush.
I welcome the alpenglow
greet the onset of Old Night
here, in this place where I am kin
to mountains and rivers.
Under this sky,
this holy, vast and terrific North
the creature in me sighs
sniffs the rugged truth
of Nature’s clear demands.
It knows the rhythm, the sway
and the unforgiving dance
of predator and prey.
Twilight sky with golden glow,
streaking pink and plum-on-blue,
I am in the present
of the living wild,
authentic and bold its declaration,
harsh and beautiful its song.
© Elizabeth Harris, 1998
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