A History

This is the second oldest of the Star Sequence poems. The first draft of this was written almost thirty years ago when I nineteen. Again just looking to tighten up and tidy up. Let me know if I can improve this in anyway as always. Thanks. § PB

I.

The trees melt all night.
Roots of limestone cliffs
give way to the force of rain.
Shapeless rain searching
secret places in the rock heart.

The cliff descends,
grain by grain, leaving
bare the bones of sea
creatures a thousand miles
from moon tossed tides,
the lost millennia
passed away beneath
the trackless stars
as countless legions
trod innocently past.

An ocean waits
for silt and clay,
chalk drawn from bone
to feed new trees.

II.

He stirs his fire
with an ash limb,
sniffs the charred end,
suspicious.

Drizzle thickens to rain,
eroding all detail. The cut
of his chin, the strata,
and leaves all
weathering into a delta.
Deposition and erosion,
the subtle way a mountain
appears in one age
and melts in another

defying the human sense
of order. He remains fascinated
with the rivulets of mud
embracing his camp.
In the slanting light of afternoon
his tent seemed to wash downstream.

III.

The deer hunter comes down
from the forest edge to a glen.
The trail is steep like a waterfall
but he comes unbruised.
Bits of slate and limestone
slide under his heel.
He has learned the stars of Orion,
keeps to their trails
like deer tracks in snow.
His buck has found a secret way

across the shattered cliffs,
half a night's journey at least–
as the cliff face rises
the valley flows out to sea.
Rain turns to snow,
catches in his hair, sticks
to his chalk tongue.

Chalk to limestone to marble,
his fire steams under a marble cliff.

IV.

Deep in a mountain cave
streams make grave
cuts in the bedrock.
He loses his buck in a tangle
of fossil creek beds. Surrenders
under the new moon. He lies
on new, naked rock
as foreign constellations fall
westward while he dreams.

Water leaps
the stone lips of the cliff.
Deer sniff the salt licks,
suspicious.