Dancing with Green Bees

Find your way to the third hearth
to become a woman of clay -- again.

Just when you believe you are
the definition of thirst,
have endured too many erasures
sealed inside a sere landscape,
you will whirl into the dance
of dragonflies.

Or the dance of the green bees
-- starting in the yellow sheen of morning,
of cactus bloom, of meadowlark, of the shining --
will fling you maiden-like beneath birdshadow.

The path to the third hearth
is strewn with surprises of sparkling quartzite.
You are amidst a fortress of rock, a cathedral of stone,
and the elemental particulate that has undergone
its many metamorphoses as have you.
Landscape bids you to absorb time,
breathe earth dust, the primordial.

There at the third hearth
the women of clay await you.
By their painted faces will you know them.

~Karla Linn Merrifield, printed in Crone, Issue No. 3.

Picture found here.