Centripetal and Child

Grand Canyon in the morning from a hike years back.

Centripetal and Child 

Upon a coffee shop in Pioneer Square, sits 
a globe painted all blue — how Seattle
sees the world or prophecy of flood — 
still when it spins

Upon the fourth day, they tilted the earth, 
at last, to meet the sky. We turn on a dime
round and round to, when it stops, we know
the world and its chronic dizzy breath. Access 
to axis, we all fall down.

Upon learning the round Earth we
troweled soil as deep as a knee,
made a break for China. 

Upon seeing the Grand Canyon we’ve
filled the holes back in.

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The other day I was sitting at a coffee shop, saw the blue globe, told myself to write about it and… here we are. At the time I was reading Genesis by Eduardo Galeano, an artful and extensive history of the Americas that begins with a collection of indigenous creation stories and seamlessly merges them into a chronological history of encounter. In one of these stories, the creation of ‘Time’ provides a sequence of days and what was made on each day — this is where the “tilted the earth to meet the sky” language came from. What a beautiful notion. It feels in conversation with this older poem: Who Felled the Tree That Locked The Earth to the Sky

Looking back now, it seems like today’s poem emerged fully formed. The accidental childlike sense of wonder and play runs through it like a vein. The idea of place and location circles it like a satellite or a compass on the fritz.

With gratitude.