George Kalamaras

What We Learn to Bow Down To

And to see that the soil is good.
And to see that the hound dog is good.
To know the scent and shake of the earth.
The wood shakes of the roof. Patina
of the gutters. Gulfs and clutter of the throat.
Surely, we survive as much by what rises
from below as we do by the great spray
of stars. The slow growth of the hickories.
Shagbark hickories. Like old men
whose years curl back partially 
to expose hints of what has been
hidden. Unsaid. Sugar maples.
Elms. Geese flying slantwise
through the throat. Each spring. Each
depth of leaves. Piling deeper
the season’s dead. The I-am-born
equaling the I-must-leave-the-body-
on-a-Monday-at-eight. Air thickening
the saliva with which we annunciate 
a word. Phrase. Like blue-speckled pup,
or silk ears dragging the ground, or hound-dog
beautiful / hound-dog my heart.
As our bones know the soil slow.
Weevils, mites. The ant-bitten
leaves. Refuse of the stars. To shake
as if the earth stopped rotating
a moment, but our molecules—
accustomed to movement—keep going.
Like explorers out ahead
of ourselves. Cold of the moon’s slow.
The roof as a floor. The sky,
a mouth. And the great good
soil. Even the shadows
it absorbs. And the things we grow, what we learn
to bow to. And the hound dog’s snout,
great and good and nobly stout. Taking it all. In.
All the way down to the ground.

---

photo by Beth Blake

George Kalamaras, former poet laureate of Indiana (2014–2016), is the author of sixteen books of poetry, nine of which are full-length, including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011). He is professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990.