A Sacred Place

A pink dream wrapped in a feather pillow, loose on a moonlit night, a kiss with eyes open, with arms linked, with the past and the future fused into the river banks, never to meet, but always married by the water.

Magic must come from somewhere, sometimes it rides in on the backs of the stars that fall out of the sky, sometimes it floats down the river and climbs up the bank when we’re not looking, sometimes it hangs on the notes of the train whistle that drones on, almost beyond hearing, an inch-worm of sound in the distance. Sometimes it falls to earth as poems.

Coyote voices swim on the cusp of night, the eyes close, then open again, the light behind them is a prairie at rest, a carnival of wind, a river of song, a question of unending balance and a headstrong thrust into the coming age.

Fat river catfish wrestle with mud and moonbeams, the loopy egrets have long gone to roost, the geese are still deciding whether to settle in for the winter or depart for softer digs further south. The rest are warm in their burrows or content in their simple homes of wood and moss.

We bring these things to bear when we touch, when we laugh at what we know to be beyond our reach, when we caress the things that are out of sight, when we kiss with our eyes open. The catfish and coyote remain immaculate in their silence. The prairie holds the dream, the moon, the kiss and the pillow. I walk along the river just above the place where it all began.