For Postcard Collectors

For Postcard Collectors

From an outcropping of rocks at Sheridan Lake, I'm listen to cracks travel across the frozen surface. The

sound is impossible to describe. The surface rises, sinks, undulates with the shifting of wind and

variations of temperature until another seam splits and travels, splits and travels. Pockets of air bubble up at the

joints. Beneath me, moss and lichens, centuries old, cover the stones. Birds, squirrels pause on branches. Everything

listens to the deep reverberations of this drum-skin. We speak, we write, we sing,

we send the message high past the trees, the hills, and into open sky. Here, this is where I am moving,

breaking up, shifting posture, uncovering something that has been hidden. I am no still-life— no

photograph, I am alive.