ORIGIN OF VALLEY

i.

In the small days she wore the sun like an anadem. mountains raised on either side of her        

like children.  Heifers came and plaited her hair between their mouths     

they were mothers. dawn caught in the blinking beak of a sparrow.  she was clear browed - 

she was a vase for wildflowers. when she borrowed darkness from the night there were no clocks

hands to pray.  the moon a gasp spinning stories on her axis.  she thought she knew water       

that had first split open the tulips mouths in awe. 

ii.

when the sky cracked its vase she learned water would grow 

to be a man no one would cross. when the river came it gouged her 

split her forehead     like baptism     split her into lips and intoned a mirror 

between them that cracked when she answered the wind.  sun a wet stain 

she couldn't excavate. he carved her stomach     into birth.  

iii.

her daughter     an unhatched wound      

came after he left      a sepia cord.  her daughter 

a milk stretched smile caught      between fat cheeks 

who did not understand her inheritance would be her       

mother's lips    a valley    where sound was a low, dry word.  her daughter 

an abalone smile     an uninhabited echo     a tongue leaked 

into clouds that sifted speech     into particles 

like any other prayer.  rain came        in elliptical seeds      

her thatched mouth swelling into blades      of sweetgrass 

pointing their fingers towards the sun.   wildflowers the heifer's snipped like hair         

grown out of his touch.