a literary journal published by the Black Earth Institute dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society
sometimes crawls across the ridges
and busies itself all night
never reaching that far
but always catching
always demanding.
One morning he woke without muscle
and an itch behind where his ear would be
and realized that he had stared at those lights
for too long, that he had become just something
chasing something else, that he no longer
knew what it felt like for his hooves
to sink into the soil.
that he cannot name.
When he was young,
when he followed
his mother and slept
in the cradle of her legs and stomach
and the grass was a dark green,
always wet, even after the sun
had reached as far as it could reach
and to touch her fur was to touch
a crackling stalk,
he knew no words
for this world
and loved it without
language.
His eyes finally move, dry, caught
in the wind as it lifts an eagle
across the river, searching, knowing
the only way to love is without words.
his teeth into a rotten
apple from that tree seeded
after a hard winter
so its roots know what frozen
ground feels like
and those apples hold that knowing
of how to live after a
long death like he holds this river
like larch hold his liver red
antler velvet until snow pulls it to dirt
Michael Garrigan writes and teaches along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and believes that every watershed should have a Poet Laureate. He is the author of two poetry collections — River, Amen and Robbing the Pillars. He was the 2021 Artist in Residence for The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. His writing has appeared in Orion Magazine, River Teeth Journal, and North American Review.
Other works by Michael Garrigan »
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