Before letters written words came
myriad forms, stone, leaf, paw,
strung together in movement –
frond sway and flutter wing
silky stream, fiery steam pool
inking the tablet of the skies
scribing with shadows the deep seas.

Before lettered words a world wound
round in the whorl of stars spin;
buds opened in evergreen seas
brushed by unnamed winds
sweeping a land hushed in sounds
of thrush, river rush, slither
over dry sands – creosote, sage –
audible in the motion of sun set.

Eden – without name, limit, or god –
spelled in the language of vines
tangled in crow screech
through the misted morning air
murmured in whale song
through chambers of the deep.

Aleph-beth, letters on paper
long after the running deer ran.
Deer as stone glyph, paper mark,
pixels on a screen – thoughts
of a deer running through deep forests
of consonant, vowel, marks
to show how the deer paused, drank
from a clear pool, leaped
over a fallen tree, laid down
on a mossy bed to sleep
to dream the dreams that deer dream.

Portland, Oregon – June 13, 2017

“With the introduction of the aleph-beth [alphabet], a new distance opens between human culture and the rest of nature….With the phonetic aleph-beth, however, the written character no longer refers us to any sensible phenomenon out in the world, or even to the name of such a phenomenon…but solely to a gesture to be made by the human mouth.” (From The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram, Vintage Press, p. 100).