Truer Than True
\nA Poem for the Earth
\nBy
\nJoseph Anthony<\/p>\n
\n
Truer Than True<\/p>\n
Roots are upside down trees
\nSpreading into vast, dark sky.
\nA sky thick with loam
\nThat loves to give way to shovels and tillers,
\nA sky packed with clumps
\nOf cumulous clay,
\nA sky studded with the constellations
\nOf rocks and bone,
\nA sky woven with hidden rivers
\nAnd jubilant, Gordian worms,
\nA sky populated by sleeping cicada nymphs,
\nBurrowing rabbits, and moles
\nThat tunnel blindly with dirt in their whiskers,
\nA sky punctuated with light-hearted seeds
\nAnd heavy, densely packed bulbs and tubers.
\nYet, in the end, what is
\nThis terra firma sky?
\nWhat is this rich, moist soil
\nThat smells so heavenly?
\nWhat is it the roots grasp and let go of
\nSimultaneously?
\nStories.
\nThe earth, the soil, this stuff the rocks and bones,
\nRivers and creatures all subsist in stories. It\u2019s all stories
\nBuilding up over scrolls of millennia,
\nLibraries of centuries, composing,
\nRevisioning, edited by graves
\nAnd buried treasures, frackers,
\nAnd coal mines, wells and chasms
\nOf underground mountains yet to be born,
\nOnly to dissolve again into
\nInfinitesimal grains, like
\nSo many syllables dropped
\nFrom the whispered lips
\nOf bards, minstrels, and children,
\nAnd those who die face down
\nIn the mud. Stories.
\nThat\u2019s what roots are surrounded by
\nAnd nibble on and assimilate.
\nAnd all of them truer than true.
\nLike flakes of mica, snowflake obsidian,
\nFossils and caskets, tears and keys, arrowheads
\nAnd shards of pottery. True like rivers
\nThat astonish us for finding ways
\nTo flow underground and soak roots
\nWith slathering kisses. True, like
\nUnderground lakes surrounded
\nBy rainbow-tinted cathedrals.
\nTrue like blood slowly seeping
\nInto cool, autumn leaves.
\nStories are the soul of the earth,
\nThe soul of sod and the ground of being,
\nStories are the stuff of earth,
\nThe very ground that lifts us through
\nOur every step and sorrow, our every
\nJoy and blunder, our every wandering
\nAnd seeking, our every discovery
\nAnd revelation. And they nourish
\nAnd compose us, form and speak us,
\nSing and cry us, lament and celebrate us.
\nAnd each one of us, each and every
\nOne of us, born from the soil,
\nBorn from the ground,
\nThis endlessly mothering earth,
\nIs a walking story, a living, breathing,
\nStory, stumbling, dancing, rising
\nAnd falling, and each one of us,
\nEach and every one,
\nIs truer than true.<\/p>\n