Elkenmist

(September 2023. Collaborative poem by Emma and I at Elkenmist, where she stayed with Waldo and Lucy for a week while I was at Burning Man. We explored around the beautiful lush PNW property of Elkenmist and wrote this poem for Ioan, who was kind enough to host us. Elkenmist is a beautiful land which you can visit! Check out elkenmist.com)

a trail of experience is the way awakening
as a mossy valley feels each beat of rain
as each beaten caress our soft tread on softer loam
home like the logslime of the slug as long as
the life of the slug one smear of time
one fragment resplendent (gilt hint of summers fall)

all the pineneedles orange towards early
(this place even more beautiful in sunlight)
a beauty surpassing the gratitude of feet
stepping into suspension of root woven cradle
revelation in treelofted tapestry

to try green on for size is to grow wondrous
& the right amount of rain’s a relative thing
& if in seeking the stars you follow the stretch of a trunk
you’ll find the heavens sigh towards the
constellations of fertile debris
beneath your searching soles

so if your soul calls to forge freedom & fog
into the living golden art of the alchemist,
seek mossblessed stillness amongst elders
and the young wrigglings of oldest mists