The Naming

Some nights we feel the furred darkness of an ancient one's breath and are trapped in awakening, dismembered by events we no longer recall. We can touch the windowsill, where October air gathers as hours slip past in thin robes, the forest a concert of voices. The last crickets let go of their songs. The land speaks, its language arising from its own geography— the mountains' hulked shapes are blue whales, remembering when they were undersea ridges, and rivers are serpentine strands hammered from silver, and dark trees talk to the wind—weaving mortal lives, drumbeats, pillars of smoke, voices wavering into updraft, the storyteller shifting the present.