Forget about the nomenclature
of the moon: lunar impact craters, rilles; your voice
translated into fiber optics or beamed pinpoint to pinpoint
on the planet. Here, all words are spoken to someone’s face.
Earth. Seeds. Thresher. Plow. Timber’d.
So unnerving, you say,
having to look someone that long in the eye, just speaking
your mind. Or too involved, in the first place,
the five-mile walk to your friend’s house,
your skirt catching on the field grass.
You need to know not hydrogen, oxygen, H20, but
water: where to find it, how to dig
for it, how to keep a well from running dry.
Not chlorophyll and photosynthesis,
the word is harvest—the hard “t”
uncompromising as hunger—
sunup and sundown, light.
Forget meteorology, you need to know
bird migration, insect hatches, animal hibernation—
what the falling leaves tell you.
When the blossoms of the apple tree fall, plant corn. In short,
the world is still whole to you.
Each molecule. Each syllable. Each grain.
This poem first appeared in New England Review.
—
Lynn Pedersen’s poems have appeared in New England Review, Ecotone, Nimrod, Borderlands, and The Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of The Nomenclature of Small Things (Carnegie Mellon) and two chapbooks. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia. www.lynnpedersen.com
