by Karla K. Morton

Featured Art: 

I run,
palms like paws on the earth,
muscles, long and sinew.

I smell wet clover,
the musk of home,
cooking meat.

I do not think about tomorrow
or yesterday,
but I remember the cactus
and the snake,
and the music of your voice
even when language fails.

And when I wake, I roll
to the nest of your shoulder.

Your arm does not reminisce
when it first wrapped my waist,
yet it comes to me;
heals even as you sleep.

I feel the peace of gravity;
the subtle spin of planet;
the rise of the mountain.

In Dog Dreams,
I have known no other hand;
no other time
when I wasn’t yours,
or you, mine.

Whoop! you call in the deepening forest.
Whoop! my descant back.

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Karla K. Morton was the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate and has written twelve collections. Her work has been published by Alaska Quarterly Review, Southword, and Boulevard. She is currently on a Words of Preservation: Poets Laureate National Parks Tour with fellow Texas Poet Laureate, Alan Birkelbach, visiting the National Parks to help culturally preserve them. A percentage of sales from the forthcoming book will benefit the Parks System.