Nature's Clockwork

 

Salmon smolts hatch and ride the

flippers of the river rolling to the sea

 

just as the red-mouth suckers

swim upward to tail-turn gravel

and spawn, leaving their DNA as ancient

as being a vertebrate, then feeding the eagles

with their dying.

 

This is the clockwork circle dance of

Nature, calling all to her intricate web

of symbiosis.  Nature tells time

 

only with the eons unfolding

her work, and here, you and I

 

together in this miracle of her art,

riding the complex hands

of Nature’s inscrutable watch.

 

J. Pratt-Walter

NaPoMo 4/12/2022

Heartbeat of the World

Sometimes the heartbeat of the world

is measured out so sweet

in lamb bleats and liquid birdsong.

Sometimes you hear it,

an echo at the end of a sunset

and the truth of it dances in your core.

Sometimes the pulse of Earth

swells and swings as slow as a mountain grows

then rolls itself down as sand to the sea.

Sometimes it vibrates like honeybees

or makes the hollow sound of loss

or keeps the cool silence of fossils.

Someday I’ll hand my pulse back to the world.

I’ll go willingly.

Listen for me at sunset, or where redwing blackbird

clasps the cattails and sings

and sings.

J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 2019