Testament

You're learning patterns
to tell your children: close
to the sowing and lapping

salt blue the weather's warmer;
the earth only shakes
on certain edges

of a continent long ago
cut adrift by shifting centers.
You are learning

backwards. There's hardly time.
Building houses closer
to mountains, tunneling deeper

through to new light,
you love all things
you've come closest to

owning, name
with the same thousand
sounds: the leaf you find

trembles like your own
aspen hand, the sky
remains bluer than any breath

you can't imagine. Losing
ways of speaking, turning
all tongues to one won't bring you

nearer to hearing. The trees
are breathing; the ground
is opening its mouths.

Copyright © 2006 Megan Gannon All rights reserved
from The Laurel Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission