Cartography of Community

We die containing a richness 
of lovers and tribes, 
tastes we have swallowed, 
bodies we have plunged into 
and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, 
characters we have climbed into as if trees, 
fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this 
to be marked on my body
when I am dead.

I believe in such cartography - 
to be marked by nature, 
not just to label
ourselves on a map
like the names of rich men and women 
on buildings.

We are communal histories, communal books. 
We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
(arranged quote)

Herd Of Buffalo Crossing The Missouri On Ice

If dragonflies can mate atop the surface tension
of water, surely these tons of bison can mince
across the river, their fur peeling in strips like old

wallpaper, their huge eyes adjusting to how far
they can see when there's no big or little bluestem,
no Indian grass nor prairie cord grass to plod through.

Maybe because it's bright in the blown snow
and swirling grit, their vast heads are lowered
to the gray ice: nothing to eat, little to smell.

They have their own currents. You could watch a herd
of running pronghorn swerve like a river rounding
a meander and see better what I mean. But

bison are a deeper, deliberate water, and there will
never be enough water for any West but the one
into which we watch these bison carefully disappear.

—William Matthews

Prothalamium

Come, all you who are not satisfied
as ruler in a lone, wallpapered room
full of muted birds, and flowers that falsely bloom,
and closets choked with dreams that long ago died!

Come, let us sweep the old streets - like a bride:
sweep out dead leaves with a relentless broom;
prepare for Spring, as though he were our groom
for whose light footstep eagerly we bide.

We'll sweep out shadows, where the rats long fed;
sweep out our shame - and in its place we'll make
a bower for love, a splendid marriage-bed
fragrant with flowers aquiver for the Spring.
And when he comes, our murdered dreams shall wake;
and when he comes, all the mute birds shall sing.

-- Aaron Kramer
(introductory quote in Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver)

The Repeated Refrains of Nature

Those who contemplate
the beauty of the earth find
reserves of strength that will endure
as long as life lasts.

There is symbolic as well as
actual beauty in the migration
of the birds, the ebb and flow of the
tides, the folded bud ready
for spring.

There is something infinitely healing
in the repeated refrains of nature —
the assurance that
dawn comes after night, and
spring after the winter.

- Rachel Carson
(arranged quote)