from the margins we may have matching scars but we have very different memories you asked me : why do I shiver on such a hot day it's the unseen pictographs below water in the river up ahead—old drowned campsites filled with human lethe-glyphs on this 21st century water a woman walked carrying her troubles – she died near here 240 years ago – and there was another, born here not long after a bird all of straight feathers now grounded and mud a fossil that may one day be & this_graffiti_left raw_cuts to exposed basalt her adornment, 18th century Native American tattoos _the earth is my body my aunties caution: do not tell men of history, do not point your wants at little girls, instead adhere to material reality speak_learn well_the material rosary: asters, bindweed, daisies, dandelions, ragwort, wild rose, columbine my aunties caution: kneel (if you're glad) to the plant not the sky, saying in the old sweat lodge the willow rots but the stones just wedge deeper basalt hides in time : time is felt at the limits of what the body can sense & the mind cannot afford to process the only dualities that matter : an animal tracks; a plant patterns the shrew dreams of seeds; and dark safe places even so where the puppy's skull is buried there are no pale orchids blooming & (forewarn) the ice dam still breathes along the margins of its widening crack: signs are loose under the water
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After a wildly productive life as an alchemist, Carol Shillibeer retired to read tarot, stalk Hierocholoë odorata in the lands west of the Pacific cordillera, and consider the implications of post-human materialism. Marginally more information (including her publication list) can be found at carolshillibeer.com.
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