The Origin of Mouths

By Jim Peterson

My parents called it nightmare.

I called it fear—

the way exhaustion took my hand

and led me down gray hallways

into the presence of

mouths,

a forest of them not attached to faces,

opening and closing—but why?

And when I woke shouting

into my room dissected

by the razor sheen of moonlight,

the faces of my parents and sisters—

whole faces complete with eyes—

hovered over my sweat-soaked bed.

Behind them in the fabric

of co-mingling darkness and light

the mouths still pulsed,

stunning my brain into silence.

Today, forty years later,

as I hike up this canyon of Capitol Reef,

enjoying equally the raw heat of noon

and relief of canyon shade,

I recognize those mouths

in the chaotic skull of a colossal stone—

unmoving now, but open,

the elemental idea of mouths

and all their purposes,

emerging out of the cavern

of time before words.

Copyright Credit: Jim Peterson, "The Origin of Mouths" from The Horse Who Bears Me Away. Copyright © 2020 by Jim Peterson. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.

Source: The Horse Who Bears Me Away (Red Hen Press, 2020)