the future is a foreign country
and we are sailing

we will not speak in human tongues
but you will learn the sounds
SPACE of ours
the songs the mountain sings
with stone teeth and breath of wind

the cries of seabirds

the names of gods
SPACE small and large

and the grammar of rivers
and songs the cedar sings
when your
SPACE engines
are gone

for our languages are songs
always songs
like feathers falling in snow
and flowing blood
SPACE the snap of tooth on bone

do not doubt

ours are languages older than life

the songs in the hearts of suns
trailing light
in the vastness of space
calling other suns to the dance

as mussels cling to stones
so languages
cling to us
grow from us
stubborn and visible
sharp as spines
SPACE and salt on ocean air

Erynn Rowan Laurie

Erynn Rowan Laurie’s Fireflies at Absolute Zero won the 2012 Bisexual Book Award for poetry. Author of Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom and The Well of Five Streams: Essays on Celtic Paganism, Erynn lives in Trieste, in the shadows of James Joyce and Rainer Maria Rilke.