DREAMING UPON TALL GREEN

                                        The wind keeps telling us something
                                        we want to pass on to the world:
                                        Even far things are real.
                                             – William Stafford (“Whispered Into The Ground”)

She lingers yet, tending every canyon, every wish
as if she’d never left—and we appeased like
suckled, scattered babies dreaming upon tall green.

This ground inhales her, swells with seed in the dark
overnight to root and reach for daylight at once—
out of the old dust, trillions of little heartbeats race

with wanting the same lush and steamy dreams
we all share, as the earth comes alive, like it has
every year. And for a moment, we are one

explosion free and full of hope for the world.
Her breath lingers in a mist within the limbs of oaks
gray upon the ridges, as if she’d never left.