Karla Linn Merrifield
Living Dinosaurs
Gila crawls out from under
a volcanic erratic to tell his story
in beads, his strings of black, patterned
strands of glossy terra cotta dots.
Shadows quake painted canyons.
Likewise rattler scribbles golden
diamonds for his fable
among cliff tops, in mossy alcoves
below sweet aquifer seeps.
The latening hot hour rattles, rattles.
And spider waits until afternoon
on cooler October days to clamber
from burrow to scratch his tale
in ochre sands—shhh! shhh!
Utahn winds quiet to listen.
Thus it is painted, written, sung
by shamans to this day as it was
in the era of hammered petroglyhs
and daubed pictographs, nights of psalms
to ancient Attercopus, her arachnida ilk.
Behold moss-laden fossils underfoot.
Step from this southwestern sandstone
dreamtime desert into our primal ferning age.
Note: Atercopus fimbriungus is the oldest spider fossil,
dating to the early Devonian period, 400 million years ago.
Colorado Mile 0: For Starters
Karla Linn Merrifield
Let me now visit Earth at its birth.
In Vishnu schist along
Colorado River's bed, twist back
one-point-seven billion years to
this planet's beginning, when the body
of God, if you can believe, created
itself and began twirling in sunlight.
Then let us seek those deep, unsettled
waters of our selves, our ancient souls,
so young by Zoroaster granite standards,
down at Grand Canyon's wild, roaring base.
Geologic time places my flesh against
rapid and rock, puts my fingertips, my lips,
in spray and sand: Another époque begins.
