“Before” by Terri Glass
Before I was river, I was rock.
Serpentine rock which made
the river shimmer peridot.
Before rock, I was a star in Orion’s Belt,
glittering down like rain on earth’s surface.
Before I was star, atoms exploded into light,
traveling faster than a train of thought.
Then I was the void, total darkness,
a vacuum sucking in failures, extinctions—
the gasoline engine, the Roman empire.
Before the void, nothing;
no birthday candles extinguished by my breath,
not a nuthatch hanging upside down
on a leafless branch.
I was eternity, serenity, the deep sleep
of a black bear, god & goddess of desire,
a code inscribed in Nefertiti’ s tomb.
I became consciousness hatching from an egg,
a hairy ape swinging in a tree,
then something upright, familiar, a face
of a girl looking for clear agates in a forest,
and longing for a horse, a black horse
to take her far into an open field
where starlight falls like glitter,
where rock is rock in a serpentine river
and time skips like a stone.
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Terri Glass Artist Statement:
I am a poet and writer of the natural world. I have been writing ever since I was a young teen and delved into reading Emily Dickinson in my room not understanding her but loving the sounds in her language. I wrote off and on through my young adulthood, taking poetry workshops. I have experimented with form from haiku to free verse, my style is mostly narrative and reflects a sense of place of the west coast from Washington to California where I have lived all my life. I later received an MFA in creative writing in my late 50’s!
Any creative endeavor unlocks a sense of surprise for me. It elevates my spirit and reveals hidden messages from the subconscious. It is a pathway to higher wisdom.
