We live in small spaces, working, eating, sleeping.
Do we know what She is, really?
How, in Arizona, She explodes up from the ground
into mile-high red rock, the Cathedral, the Hands,
or She implodes far down into Her own belly,
displaying Her inner self without secrets,
silent, awesome, vast, powerful, infinite?
Or how She riles Her cold Pacific, daily washing the Western shore,
turquoise and lapis, boulders thrown like pebbles hither and yon,
sea weed and sea lions rejoicing,
whales diving and blowing air as they pass year by year?
North, how She sets forth giant trees,
so wide and tall that each is a world,
each a life for a thousand species, Her silence immense and eternal?
And how Her blood, Water, crashes over rocks through Colorado,
worshiped by the Hopi, drop by drop,
measured enough to grow corn on the dry mesa
or wild enough to scrub the arroyos clean again?
Do we see how wide She is, how vastly new?
Do we gain that joy She intended for us,
privileged as we are to be Her guests?
Annelinde Metzner
August, 2003
Listen to "What She Is" read by Nels Arnold (with choreography by Shelli Stanback) in the 2009 performance of my work, "In the Mother Grove."
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| Shelli Stanback and Nia Dancers perform "What She Is" |
