I love places:
like the earth barely covering
the stem of the tomato plant
on the balcony sunning
or other ones with names:
Jeremy’s Run near Luray
where one morning April
a brook trout beautiful
rose speckled from darkness
to the whirling light
off a Panther Martin.
There are some places,
the Appalachian trail,
or Route 1 north of Mendocino
that are too big for me
to comprehend.
I am better off with little
streams like the one
falling out of Turquoise lake
toward the Rio Grande
South of Taos leaning
into the mid day sun
or on Guadalupe plaza
where Gringos, Navajos, hippies
and touristas feather in
and out of store fronts,
small fish on coral.
Have you seen Pea Ridge
in Northwest Arkansas
covered with fog smoke
in March lifting from cannon
fired a century and a half ago?
I am so happy I saw it
before everything I own
had a camera embedded in its skin;
I cannot survive without naming
the grasses that part
fresh and gold green
beneath my feet
or calling to killdeer,
milkweed, spiderwort, obsidian.
The naming of things
is the first to go
followed by story and recollection,
and then the places themselves
fall away into a fen of ambivolence.
Meganser, ash fall, Northern Lights, crayfish.
We have been given a lifetime
to learn to love
the world we live with.
— Terry Pettit
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