This small collection of poems explores the concept of Deep Time, and how we can view stratigraphy, or the layers of the Earth, as a historical document of both humanity and geologic history. Many of the pieces were written after spending time outdoors, in places like the 85-ish million year old Niobrara chalk formation in Kansas, which used to be the Western Interior Seaway. I was interested in exploring how life, both human and otherwise, is deeply connected across time and space, and how we can use principles of historiography to understand the preservation of past and future eras. In addition, I attempted to center the lives of historic women in several of the poems, such as the medieval polymath St Hildegard of Bingen, and the Merovingian queen Clotilde. Beowulf – the sequel was written in response to Maria Dahvana Headley’s iconic modern translation of the ancient poem.

 

 

Stratigraphy 

 

I walk the floor of a shallow sea 

in late June, to see the diving monsters,

the fish within a fish. With no map 

 

or compass, we found our sweet corner 

of water-carved country somewhere 

past the pressed seam of highway parting

corn fields from wheat, wheat from cotton. 

 

Out on the chalk, my fingernails taste 

the matrix, fine-grained as mealy flour. We climb

upwards into crust of sagebrush, slipping 

 

on loose alluvium with a make-shift elegance 

cobbled from metallic water and days without walls.

Hammers strike, another layer is uncovered, 

 

and when the first pieces of bone are pried from 

unyielding earth, we learn to compose the narrative 

of water and dirt. If I were George Sternberg, 

 

I would take the time with plaster and brush, decipher 

twisted vertebrae from scapula or sacrum, but our time 

is fleeting, and I am not yet fluent in the language of burial. 

 

I am beginning to learn the letters, scratched into dusty 

crevices, a calligraphy written on parched vellum 

in the Book of Days, left out to dry under the midday 

midwestern sun. Thirty million years pressed

 

into one outcrop is enough to wonder what our thin furrow

of strata will look like, who will dig into the chalk, 

making ossuaries of pockets and collecting bags. 

The Magistra 

 

I dreamed of light

and an egg I held

 

in parted palms; it did not crack,

but carried in its water 

 

the revolutions of planets. I woke

to an animal scratching 

 

at the door and my sisters

singing. I’ve dressed them

 

in silk and filigree coronets,

they orbit the quire like moths

 

to a holy flame. Last night, rain 

dug wells below our windows  

 

and from this hilltop sanctuary 

the Rhine is a heavy length 

 

of floss unspooled. I stand 

at the edge of muddied fields, 

 

put words to the greening of spelt

and yarrow. In the eastern hall,

 

narrow beds are filling. I hold 

tired faces in cupped hands: 

 

laborers, unwed mothers, my 

sweet sisters. In each fruitful year, 

 

I’ve held the pattern: health, sickness, 

other growing things. On parchment

 

I’ve traced vice and vigor, the symmetry 

in seeds sprouting from plowed earth. 

 

That night, I spoke of an egg. 

Now, my teeth are stained with lapis 

 

and crushed cinnabar. The wheel turns. 

Now, I am a cradle of white stone, 

 

a fingerprint on the moon.

 

Modern Katabasis 

 

Press a palm 

to the red ochre outline.

 

When darkness squashes 

the articulated agency

of mammal language,

 

feel the artist 

pushing back.

Sole to sole, 

reach out: 

for the calcified skull, 

the brittle twist of hair.

 

Meet openhanded 

through sediment, 

descend 

 

into the slow-flowing

tides of the underworld. 

 

Metal rungs, cold wash 

of headlamp light – 

mineral bodies echo

the creatureliness 

of excavation: 

 

reefs of teeth, 

stalagmite spines. 

 

What is instinct, 

but the need

for our lonely species

 

to entrust the clandestine

limestone with remnants

of memory and matter,

so we can crawl out

of tenuous fault-lines  

 

and lie under a glut

of star salted sky. 

 

Snaefellsjökull 

 

We climbed across the skin 

of a dying god 

 

and tasted at the summit 

from its opened veins.

 

A funeral procession 

in crampons, we peeled

 

wool coats from sweating 

skin minutes after stepping 

 

onto the snow. Scalps 

began to burn beneath 

 

midnight sun, beneath 

the candle weeping hot wax 

 

onto lapis pillars and azure 

bastions of breathing ice. 

 

We moved on – 

trolls and pumice giants 

 

rising out of wide palls 

of fog, standing sentry

 

over our muted parade. 

We moved on – 

 

rope threaded between us, 

between each fledgling body, 

 

guiding our carefully charted 

ascension. 

 

But this was a solitary task. 

To hear the water, as it ran

 

in the basin of fissure or crevasse,

necrotic wounds that threatened 

 

each clumsy footfall. The water,

and the quickening of tephra 

 

into slopes of oozing mud. 

 

Beowulf – the sequel 

 

Now, this was before the age of Bede 

when, like mediocre mead, stories flowed 

from goblet to greedy gullet. Bro –

The halls were full that night,

laughter and rowdy revelry banishing
the shadows stalking at the door. 

No more would the darkness be the demon’s 

domain when merry-making was in Heorot.

 

The hostess glided like a wraith

between benches and barstools,

gold glinting in the glow of torchlight. 

Carrying the ewer was Wealhtheow, 

Canny Queen, wedded to the Halfdane,

but don’t forget she was a Wulfing first,

her bride-price the promise of goodwill

between tribes. For she was the peace-weaver 

and her loom the word-horde that kept the 

ashen hills from running with the blood 

of her people.

 

But alas. 

Hrothgar the Scylding; king, kinsman, warrior –

Was wedded to the whetted blade too, and it was he

who watched the Franks and Frisians with a bloodlust 

as entrails were spilt upon the fertile fields 

and rich peat across the water.

The Merovingians, they didn’t hold back. 

When Hlōdowig touched Danish soil 

there was no choice but to answer the call.

These were the men who slayed Hygelac –

This was the man who tasted from the drinking skull 

still bearing the memory of the Geatish king 

who fell at a Frankish sword. 

 

So. Laughter wasn’t long lived in Heorot

when word of warriors arrived at the hall door. 

Hrothgar gathered to him two hundred fists

promising them a glory-bound fate – in this life or the next, 

God only knows. Draped in mail from head to foot, 

gathering to them arms passed from forefather to son,

shining unearthly metal, mythic blades that had 

feasted on flesh like untamed wolves and still rang

with the sweet song of battle. They could taste it in the air,

these browbeaten brothers. 

 

Bro, the Danes faced a fearsome foe, no mere nuisance-makers.

Hlōdowig the pagan king, golden plaits ran like rivers down his back,

baptized by his wife’s wishes, though herself a foreigner in his kingdom. 

This man had begun as a half-pint heir, unschooled, 

fathered by an exile and a mistress, there was no honor in bloodline. 

But a youth spent with one eye open, challenging

any rivals who dared dispute the prince’s prowess, 

placing poison in the plates of his enemies, 

had earned him comrades and companions. 

Proof enough, here was a king. 

 

I say, here was a king! He had come for a crown. 

 

Across the whale-wandered road

another weary wife knew her place and saw it clearly. 

This was Clotilde; waiting, watching and watchful, 

as much a queen as winter is long and 

stone is old. A woman who looked to God for some 

sign her sons had not fallen renounced by fate. 

She who had saved the pagan king, brought

with her bishops and holy books

from a forsaken homeland. 

She wasn’t one to look backwards. 

God loving; loved by God Clotilde would be 

buried in a bed of gold combs and cabochons at 

the feet of Saint Genevieve: this was a good queen.  

 

When the day had come, the sky-candle weeping wax,

over yawning hills and broken barrows 

Wealhtheow went to her sons – Hreðric and Hroðmund

dressed for dancing in the battlefields, 

who stood among chieftains and soldiers alike. She  

offered prized pieces from the horde: seaxes and sheaths 

and spell-bound torcs, sacred heirlooms from times past. 

But her heart was heavy, for beneath a hallowed helm 

Hrothgar was graying and galled from years 

of torment and torture, tired at the hands of Grendel, 

monster, hellish heathen sent back to the mere 

by a man worthy of the great tale-spinners, who had 

bathed in the blood of beasts. There was no time 

to call for the Geats aid, a warrior occupied 

in his own ravaged kingdom – It was the Danes fight to finish,

God willing. 

 

The Merovingians didn’t hold back.

Swarming like bees across the fen, unfaltering

in a shield wall unmatched in living memory. 

The spear-Danes waited at the hills crest.

 

At a somber high table, Clotilde clasped hands 

and looked to the south, brooding clouds 

portents of perilous proceedings. 

Far from fault-lines, Wealhtheow looked to the Heavens 

and saw a history carved in blood and bone

a darkness fast approaching, no horns sounded 

as the armored armies scraped skulls, 

offal left unburied and broken bone-houses 

scattered like leaves in the mire. 

 

Fate was absentminded that day.