Poetry
Julia Laurent
Mt. Shasta Girl
It is a young woman
who dreams about the event.
With wild iris thread and pine seeds,
she buys invisible arrows
and the earth of your footprint.
The way photons and electrons
seem to be in two places at once,
she sings you songs while you sleep;
(with the defiant gesture of
loving without being loved.)
With the silence of altars, of orchards,
the silence of things found in the road,
she possesses the atoms of time
and the liberations of flowers.
There are only beginnings. Hundreds of them.
She dances with animal ghosts,
in her sage bark shoes on the dry violet sand.
With the patience of a watchmaker,
wild as tinder, certain as red flint,
she surveys her dream
like the X-ray of a storm.
To make the most of the sky,
she throws the tears of all deer
to cleanse the crime of genocide.
The way we kiss dice before we roll them
we use eagles for advertising,
we keep Fort Jones military notes,
we play with plastic wild west Indians.
With the world knowing
she fingerspells, "Follow Me".
You'll find your footprint in pure mornings.
She has no quarters and no phone booths.
Beware of a woman who dreams.
This poem appeared in Church on Thursday, Issue # 8, August 1997.
