Speaking in Tongues
by Mary Jo Balistreri
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world” —John Muir
Before the spoken word—the rush and roar of a waterfall
down walls of Vishnu schist, the more muffled pitch that tumbles
among jumbled talus slopes, the unidentified melodies of birds
that ricochet off looming basalt, cascade down slick-rock cliff,
rise and fall in a crevice—original bass of stone, earth key
of multifarious voices intertwining and overlapping.
Like music, speech of another kind:
lightning cracking and singing the air, an eagle’s scree
plummeting toward prey, shuddering and stopping time;
a heron’s hoarse shriek disappearing into a soundless blue blur;
the more subtle dry-boned rustling of sage, howling and sighing
of wind, the vibrating dark. Dialogue of silence and sound,
ebb and neap, systole and diastole,
rhythms that enjoin or scatter our paths,
the thread we contour our lives around, labyrinth
that returns us to the place where we spoke our first word.
