Mayita Mendez, Untitled, 2021 (Artist Website, Instagram)
Photograph
IV. Song with Rosehip & Flint
This mountain stippled
with forget-me-not
& scribbled with quartz
is another firmament.
We stumble through
its rock cosmos,
inflorescence
buried like stars.
To my daughter,
I give rosehips,
bright gourds
to distract
as her brothers climb
the boulders,
their bodies outposts,
simmering with intent,
eyes like struck flint,
scavenging the unknown.
At noon, we find the tracks:
all these indentations
in a dead riverbed,
harrowed out by erosion.
Transit system
marching into nowhere,
humbling in its size.
Through my children’s eyes,
I see dinosaurs clamber
from the place
where imagination assembles,
out of that cave
where we rehearsed
millions of years ago.