The Naming

Some nights we feel the furred darknessof an ancient one's breath and are trappedin awakening, dismemberedby events we no longer recall.We can touch the windowsill,where October air gathersas hours slip past in thin robes,the forest a concert of voices.The last crickets let go of their songs.The land speaks, its language arisingfrom its own geography—the mountains' hulked shapesare blue whales, rememberingwhen they were undersea ridges,and rivers are serpentine strands hammered from silver, and dark treestalk to the wind—weaving mortal lives,drumbeats, pillars of smoke,voices wavering into updraft,the storyteller shifting the present.