Grey Dawn in Chaco Canyon
Lean eye bone to wall bone,
thumb stone’s scars and fissures.
Draw myself into the narrow dark
into the lore:
Birthed from a molten core
bathed under six oceans, thrust
into turrets, wind washing dust
to the Gobi, cliff dust, my dust
Hint of damp. Once a slim straw
of water leaked from hidden lips,
fed the beans, kept the Anasazi alive.
My belly, the rockbelly
our motion placental.
I pull my eye away, cheek chafed,
lift my hand to the tenderness.
Lift my gaze to the cliffs
centuries of hard mothering.
Children hidden in her skirts,
love, a silent trickle from deep inside.
Nancy L. Meyer, she/her, intrepid cyclist, lazy cook from unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands, aka San Francisco. First collection, The Stoop and The Steeple, 2024. Nominated twice each by Best of the Net and Pushcart. In 10 anthologies including by Gunpowder Press, Wising Up Press, Ageless Authors and many journals: The Write Launch, Sheila Na Gig, The Orchards, Caesura and the Colorado, Laurel, Madison, McNeese, Stonecoast and Sugar House Reviews. Hedgebrook resident. Poetry activist with Salt&Poetry. FB/IG/threads nancylmeyerpoet; www.nancylmeyer.com
