HEART OF EVERYTHING

I passed through your heart,
the heart called Tongue,
where the moon murmured in your red shadow
and touched a knife point
where the vein called Powder throbbed.

Inhaled in the Big Horn snow
the sweet breath of sweet grass
singing from your lungs.
Drank deep where the Running Water rises
from a crease on the back of your neck.

I climbed the white ladder of your ribs
where ponderosas heaved with every sigh
from the dark womb Mother of distance
and kissed your lip open like sky
to the great round voiceless mouth.

You are everywhere in this
great beating heart of the world,
cloud whose shadow spots
the Thunder Basin like ponies,
dream whose shadow bloodies the moon.

These prayers
pulse from that heart,
singing your song in wounded words
where the waters weep into the sand
and rise again and again.


© 1997 by Richard W. Todd

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