Donika Kelly

What Is the Measure

I catalog what I cannot capture: the sun, its ragged stumble into rockface, the precise elevation of this plateau or the next, the sea, of course, against which everything is measured. My tools are insufficient, inexact. For instance: there is no way to measure the peak against the distance from the tip of one ring finger to the other, no matter my arms’ position: outstretched, limp, akimbo. For instance: there is no way to weigh the earth pushed out of earth against the gravity of my body, its bones, its sacs, its meat and animating light. I submit: I do not constitute the mountain. This, in spite of the pallet of old quilts and newly fallen maple leaves I’ve made at its immeasurable base. I submit: I do not constitute the field, although I have harrowed its length, its width with my narrow feet, my slow step. Never mind I hear what scurries or scatters, what burrows or bounds. Never mind I raise my hand to hover the bent grass, the echinacea’s bald crown— all of which withers or writhes, all of which is new or nearly the same before my foot’s next fall. I submit: As with the mountain, the field. As with the field, you, ineluctable as a season, sun ragging the rockface. Your arm, nearly as long as mine, your palm, wider, your mouth a beginning, your eyes, of course, against which everything else is measured. You harrow and the summit writhes; your broad foot falls, and the field, akimbo, gives up its gravity, lets loose its bodies its bones, thrums an animating light.