An Aquifer of Self (with a Blessing from the Bog People)
I was caught inside a monkey puzzle
tree¾confused¾a corrugated ripple
of prodded, shredded original skin, a mockery
of what could have been, hidden within
thick sediment of calcified bone
but pulled hard by southern latitude, slipped
southward I did, sloping low to just ten feet
above sea level, returning to primal Summerland
where eight thousand years passed since the Bog
People pinned down their dead with wooden stakes
in water-filled graves for thirteen hundred
years until their calibrations shifted,
their collective equilibrium of weaving cloth
and hunting deer moved elsewhere¾to a vanishing
point, an edge-space where they disappeared.
In the death cradle, here, at peat bog’s edge
I slip in with them, let out my breath
till I feel my bones turn from me¾I hold fast
to the thick of my iliac crest and take in their gifts:
mineral and marrow become a honeycomb
of flexible cartilage. I put my thumb and forefinger
into the hollow of their own woven bones¾
their spine and fossa. I caress the dark plum
of their brain preserved as they slumber,
sustained in sapric peat; swim in their whispered lullaby
and sense an aquifer of self begin the flush¾
the filtering out of sediment and sentiment¾the foreign
and unnecessary. Lightened, my arms sweep
upwards like wings of red-capped crane
returning in autumn. Sleeping child pulls a turtle’s
carapace, speckled, and a toy wooden pestle,
from beneath her shroud in an invitation
to play in their shallow grave¾
her mother, close by, offers muddied prickly pear,
bottle gourds, and elderberry seeds as sacrifice
to the living so that the magic of the dead is remembered.
This is how we learn to breathe. I give silt-filled whispers
back as their bodies encircle my limbs, my torso¾
lift my arms and push at the curved arch of each foot.
Over one hundred men, women and children sing
to me of palmetto and manatee, of ibis and alligator.
They hum vibrations of big wind storms and the biology
of birth till I crawl to the bog-pond’s edge with glorious
gifts: blood-songs and hummingbird, the jacaranda
and yucca in my lung. The starting point of me, awash fresh
in the mud of man, god and goddess, undisturbed¾
until eleven years, eleven months, and eleven
days later, in 1982¾when a Titusville back-hoe operator
digging out a pristine pond for a road in Windover Farms
discovers the preserved bodies of one hundred sixty-seven
people who’d been laid to rest there over eighty centuries
ago. Teeth pulled tight across my jaw as the gift of the bottle
gourd and prickly pear shake under fingertips
of my strong bones and sinuous skin. I hum the tunes
of the queen palm weavers and makers of mammoth rib hammers,
trying to recall what I’d gone into the pond
to forget¾the memory of the monkey puzzle
tree, too small now, to remember.
Photo Credit: http://cchscostarica08.pbworks.com/f/wetlandsregion.jpg
