The Great Mirror
by Mindie Kniss
by Therese Halscheid
When it has had enough
of our thoughts,
the earth’s silence ends
and slowly
or suddenly
it forms
what we have been thinking.
This is how we learn of ourselves -
what emotions
we are made of
what has been stored
within us, all that
cold silence,
fiery anger,
flooding sorrow.
That pain…
The pain which comes
fastening itself to the world
that is too much sometimes
like what the dry heart does -
how rage becomes
the ground’s sudden quaking
and all those places of trembling dirt -
the landslides.
And of quiet spots,
our feelings are
that vast hush
with glistening meadows
the flowers there.
Therese Halscheid has lived simply as an itinerant writer for the past sixteen years – working deeply with the earth in unusual settings. Many poems come from an intimate relationship with earth, claiming it as a being rather than something to be controlled. Learn more at her website: ThereseHalscheid.com. Editor’s note: “The Great Mirror” originally appeared in Albatross, and Halscheid’s book, Uncommon Geography.
