Cairn Poem by Indigo Hawkins

As diluted orange mingles with a deepening indigo,
the colors pool not in my heart but in my feet.
I tread the bear path and transverse dusk,
skirting husks of maize in a world at rest awakening.

I possess no past and yet the past
possesses me; my history lies latently in
my mother's rippling music and my father's
orphaned father, whose stories stagnate,
dammed, in reflective, empty waters.

All day it has rained, and I have stood by the river,
speculating on its surges with a sore estrangement.
To seek its source, I must defy the stream; my feet
squelch the mire as I sift through violated soil.

Anchored in the earth, the roots moan curses,
striving to reclaim their connection with the sky.
Bamboo shoots native to another land
block the stars. They hum with malcontent trees,
twined together by a shared invasive species.

Innate to all this is a spiral; its core resonates
like a sound wave-visceral and pitch-
from the river to the roots to the cosmos, cycling
infinitely outward, each moment I gaze within myself.