Lindsay Rockwell

I Am Kneeling

You are kneeling next to me.
‌          Our skins touch. Worlds are being born.

A line of kneeling bodies to the vanishing point—
‌          all our naked knees needing the earth, our bread.

It is night, sky obsidian,
‌          the iris of each star’s iridescence an invitation.

Our heads hatless, our feet shoeless—
‌          dark settles on our shoulders.

The desert is still, cautious, weighing each soul’s imprint—
‌          carbon, water, sorrow—

her beige body stretches
‌          makes room for more bodies

bending the way they do when kneeling,
‌          leaning one way or the other.

Sandwarm from sun’s singe,
‌          we wait. We wait

for our invitation from some singular star—
‌          leaning and quiet.

I, Mountain

I woke this morning a mountain.
What I mean is I woke and found
my body to be a mountain. This was unexpected
and spectacular. A mountain
breathing with a four chambered heart
holding raven’s sky. I mean
ravens are holding up the sky
and the sky is in my mountain heart
and though my heart has only four chambers
each is infinite and curious. The first chamber
holds all my mother’s kites.
Holds my mother’s kites
close to my mountain skin, wind
and ocean salt. And as the unbreakable dawn
declares herself, I, mountain, am now weeping
because I am also a body that is human
and very small, with a four chambered
heart that impossibly pumps, holds the strings and sees
the streamers of all my mother’s kites
boundless as sky and salt and let’s not forget the stars.

Lindsay Rockwell is poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut and hosts their Poetry and Social Justice Dialogue series. She is published, or forthcoming in CALYX, EcoTheo Review, Gargoyle, Radar, River Heron Review, among others. Her collection, GHOST FIRES,is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press summer ’23. She is the recipient of poetry fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Straw Dogs Writers Guild/Edith Wharton’s The Mount residency.  Lindsay holds a Master of Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of Arts and is an oncologist.