Language Meanders

by Catalina Claussen

Language meanders,

trickling over touchstones

multi-faceted in riprapped river beds

that seep knowledge of geologic time and space

reflected and refracted

from the sparkle of your green eyes to the tips of my toes.

Language stores,

indigenous, intimate knowing of animal, vegetable, and mineral,

nourishing the web,

permeating the skin of a blue-belly lizard,

vibrating in the fecund chloroplasts of prickly pear pads,

purifying the cells of those who wish to drink it.

Alive, born,

merging and vanishing at the confluence of past and present,

I am per-son.

One sound.

One tone in the symphonic cacophony of existence,

riding the current into the uncertain future.