by Ellen Metrick
“I … am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over” – Walt Whitman
It must have taken
a long time
The grief
Must have been
was a river
melting slowly at first
on damp cave walls
earthmilk dripping from stone
it was that slow
noticed only as scratches
took form; a catalog
of shapes, a prehistoric
shopping list, a lithic
mourning
an invitation to our future selves:
come, this is the way in