Tucked in her cave between flat stones
in Pine Creek, the largest remaining
salamander’s been dubbed the last dragon.
Breathing through mud-mottled skin,
blending with the river bottom,
the hellbender can only survive
in clear, flowing water. These days,
too many streams are silting over,
like your mind suffocating on distractions.
This hermit requires a pure stream
as an artist needs a clean canvas
where their paints can breathe,
as a writer needs a pristine page
for words to crawl and float across,
as a composer needs unsullied silence
to fill with patterned sound.
—
Judith Sornberger lives on the side of a mountain near the Pine Creek Gorge in the northernmost tier of the Appalachians. Her five full-length poetry collections are: The Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art, forthcoming from Shanti Arts, Angel Chimes: Poems of Advent and Christmas (Shanti Arts), I Call to You from Time (Wipf & Stock), Practicing the World (CavanKerry), and Open Heart (Calyx Books). She’s also the author of six chapbooks and the prose memoir The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany. She is a professor emerita of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania where she taught English and Women’s Studies. www.judithsornberger.net
