Lately my 84-year-old mother’s been
hearing noises: a party in the street below
her bedroom window—gruff men cursing,
a woman’s shrieking laughter, beer cans going
“dink” off the concrete. Finally she got the nerve
to peek out: nothing but a street light. Sounds
coming from inside her
Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa
Before there was the time we see
there was the time we saw through,
when the biggest bear lied down,
exhaled the boundary of herself—
woof!—and rolled onto her side.
Her family followed in a line,
bending like an oxbow lake,
crocheting holes in the land
where water bubbled through
(so much does bubble through).
Birds saw the bears
bubbling up and dug it.
Whoa!
So with wing fingers wide,
they pressed their feathered breasts
flat to the ground which sung
their own songs back at them but
way slower, like whale
songs in
amber.
Is that a yes or a no? the birds asked.
Yes, replied the ground.
Whoa!
Green grass grew over them,
which was a long, green love song.
Nearby, turtles, panthers, dogs
lost their boundaries…exhaled…then
found them again and became constellations.
What speed was the time
signature singing then when all those
holes in space opened up
and bear after bear,
bird after bird,
sun after sun lost
refound their shapes in
the long song, knowing
themselves at last for
what they were:
eternal,
immutable,
from every possible angle.
Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer L. Knox. This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant.
Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer L. Knox. This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant.

Jennifer L. Knox
Jennifer L. Knox is the author of Days of Shame and Failure (Bloof Books, 2015), The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (Bloof Books, 2010), Drunk by Noon (Bloof Books, 2007), and A Gringo Like Me (Bloof Books, 2007). She lives in Iowa, where she teaches at Iowa State University.