Catherine Pierce

Dear Place, I Ask So Much

Canyon me. Ravine me. Redwood me,
roots deep to the wet center. Limb me

cloudward. Fan me out alluvial
and unabashed. My soft heart sediment.

My hard heart anthracite. Lagoon me.
Lava me. Lake me sprawling and still.

Dear beasts in the tar pits, these millennia!
Dear glass-cased specimens, how little we knew!

I dream a tattoo, a cerulean speck
on my forearm: our planet from four billion

miles away. Trench me deep, O
earth-and-more. Volcano me to sky

or under sea. High desert me.
Dell and dune me. Hurricane me

homeward. Whitecap me out
of my small fretting, magnolia me

away from what mires. Oh home-of-lynx,
home-of-grackle, home-of-frog-and-fox.

What incantation can I weave for you?
What spell can I spin to glacier you

again blue and unending?

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Catherine Pierce is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Tornado Is the World (Saturnalia 2016); her new book, Danger Days, is forthcoming in October 2020. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, the New York Times, American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series and elsewhere, and has won a Pushcart Prize. A 2019 NEA Fellow, she co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.