This is not the kind of love borne from
cedar-ocean-moss
or the scent of rain
kissing your cheek.
This is not lost in soft tides
ebbing-flowing
emotional currents
changed by the hour,
traveling outside territories
searching searching searching.
No.
This love swallows the exposed heart
sand-dust torn,
made from eruption-floods
basalt-strong,
silica light.
This love nourishes the dry landscape of
any body that has been
over-watered,
under-heated.
It will suck minerals into you so ancient,
you’ll hear the wind songs echo through your bone
rising to greet the sun-lit moon.
I’ll show you
crags and sharp lines:
the way pain etches across stone,
carving new life
new dreams
raw and bare.
I’ll take you to the round rock
moulded from curved hills
—the desire valleys—
poised to receive you,
revive you.
This is the enduring love of shifting land,
free from broken ice, water and ash,
beating its drum
high on the plateau
chinook in hair,
moans that cut through rivers,
grounded in land.
This is the love that awaits you.
©rebecca cavender, January 2019
“I do not envy those whose introduction to nature was lush meadows, lakes, and swamps where life abounds. The desert hills of Yakima had a poverty that sharpened perception.”
—Justice William O. Douglas
*Chinook—group of US First Nations people (Tchinouk) in the Pacific Northwest – specifically around the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon – unrecognized by US gov’t as a tribe; also a föhn wind; and a type of salmon.
In this poem, I’m referring to the warm chinook winds that pass through Yakima, the desert valley where I live; here is the myth about these winds.