Olorgesailie
–
the mind was flat
before it found the horizon
could sink into the sea’s drift,
and eclipse the silted cliffs, that stretch
their chins beyond
the rested bones of this basin
–
lapping off the endless run of mist
untongued by air, into the philosopher’s sky
–
a mountainous resound of the land’s
pooling cloud, drowned in the partless sun
–
saving us before our thought’s dawn-
the mask of nuclear shadows, sketching
upon on the shores of an anenome moon
–
we can no longer explore
–
The journeys of color through light’s relay
hold the day in echo of where it began
in yesterday, a wrinkle retreating
–
inside the elephants skin we are cratered in,
alive in the dormant valley’s paleosol,
red swept from the back of tomorrow
–
where the tributaries traced as maps
are kaleidoscopic truths to the eye
of a thousand pencil cartographers
–
engrained in a refugee’s face
–
or an ancestor’s print, petrified
within the desert of direction
