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Likin' Lichen

                Names for lichen, found on a yellow page (mutt tree
                source) inside a dowry chest, cedar : Lucid. Gray
                Fortune.  Never Mind. Arise.

            Never mind.                                                                 

            To walk, in a forest like this one,

            is to go out of mind. Into lucidity.

   

 

 

     Slip in closer.
     See?
     I will lick this lichen,
     peel it back.

     Does the boulder want anything of me?     

     Where is my lifespan here...

     a barest beyond nothing?



 

 

 		      Against such rich upholstery
     tumble down, loosen --

     instead of Q and A,
     why not peel the questions back?

     Q to Q 
         to Q --
             grooves --
                  goings-on . . . 

     Merry Way.
     Cumin.
     White Glove.
     Exposure.
 

The angle shifts.

Vertical,
then horizontal.

Such a sense of pressure, now,           
such force!

Then emerges the shadow,
the one who takes the picture....

A precarious, performative, playful, potential...

perspective on the rock.

 

 

          Green Love. Shawl Moss.
          No monument but soft. 

          Roots, reaching....
          How far?

          There is no end: to the reach,
          to the universe.

          And no key.

This photo essay was inspired by a sequence of pictures Anne Dalke took while traveling in Norway in the summer of 2011, which led to a poem, evolving in conversation between her and Alice Lesnick. Perhaps the next generation in a series of poems about women and geology....? About risk-taking....? About aesthetics??

 

 

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