SageGreenJournal.org

voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary

Kathleen Cain

Arvada, Colorado

What This Means,

Being Cottonwood

Kathleen Cain is a poet and nonfiction writer.She was an early recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts. Her book, The Cottonwood Tree: An American Champion (2007) was selected for the Nebraska 150 Book Project, in honor of 150 years of Nebraska literature. She has performed with Seth Harris's Readers' Laboratory and delights in giving Cottonwood "Walk 'n Talks" with interested readers and nature enthusiasts. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. Two of them were included in Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology, 1867-2017.

Stand near the river with your feet

slightly apart. Push your toes down

beyond the mud, below the water.

Stretch your arms and head back

deliberately, until straight lines

no longer matter—until the sky

from any angle is your desire.

Let the skin go grey and split open.

If you die a little somewhere

the wind will carve the branches back

into an alphabet

someone will try to remember

how to read. Stay this way

half a century or more, turning leaves

in the half-note tides of the air.

Inside, with that blood so slow

no one hears it, set buds for spring

by each late October. November,

December, dream what it means

being owl … or star.

SageGreenJournal.org is a non-commercial project, an online anthology, to share a poetic vision of the land we love.

We have no permanent office although we do have deep roots in western Colorado.

You can write us at Box 160 Norwood CO 81423, or better yet, email us, by clicking 

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