I am the serpent
undulating, smooth mounded earth.
I meander your secrets,
fossilized creatures and bones
soils of thousands before you.
My head and tail mark each solstice
beginning and end, light within me,
but I do not cease in either place.
My spirit continues as grasses
a wave of wind in ancient song.
See me and then seek others,
mounds of shapes for ancient eyes.
Yours too can see my living rest,
effigies and raised birds in earth.
Share my calm. Join my native prayer
and let me be.

Serpent Mound in Ohio. According to Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road, “Like so many other mounds, it would have been destroyed to make room for construction if money hadn’t been raised to save it, in this case, with the help of a group of women at the Peabody Museum of Massachusetts.”  I’ve never seen Serpent Mound but have been to Effigy Mounds in Iowa. Written for dVerse, Pub for Poets’ challenge: write an ecopoetry by exploring and dwelling in our relationship with nature in such a way that implies responsibility and engagement.