my soul among all souls
lives in a silver vein
coursing the chthonic world
lives in that ore containing both living and dead
amid their mercurial being
my soul runs its thread of silver
with the huge cedar-neighbor’s shining thread
alongside that of the great-horned owl
the wing-flash flicker
mine, a wisp of gleam
within the precious metal-light
of Rilke, of Gandhi, of Sappho
of my Whitman father, my Whitman mother
what surrounds our vein of souls
is solid, is the sky
the mountain tarn
a lily-meadow endless in its petal-thick perfume
one vein, one pathway we all take
through the underside of a world
unfolding even now
unfurling ever
this world that uncoiled its worldliness
long before I was,
before birth itself
could be born
Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, has seven full-length books of poetry, most recently One Small Sun, from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she received the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts. In 2013 she was Willamette Writers’ Distinguished Northwest Writer.
