She releases the earth,

every dawn, opens

like day and closes like night.

The human highway

is nothing to her,

blunt in its purpose,

coursing to no destination

she calls home. The squirrel’s

chatter, the flycatcher’s shrill

empty gossip beneath her shadow,

no rumor scores her quiet.

                        All night

she wakes and wakes again,

nothing to tell, no story

to sound, the broken syllables of the lake,

the susurration of the river her

names for hunger.

He talons seize the steelhead

and grasp the trout,

but in a kingdom of pinprick

birdsong she is the tidings,

now and now, echoing nothing,prey to no rumor, silence her anthem.