Lithosphere

James Davidson

He greets me with a beguiling smile

& the scent of patchouli spiked

with cinnamon, with soft fingers

that trace the topography

of my forearms, with his long brown

hair — free & loose — cascading

onto my shoulders as his arms engulf

me. He is a chestnut tree

dropping nuts and hints

after which I scurry.

But he is less like a tree. His tall body

moves steady like a mountain —

no concern for time as it glides

with the lithosphere shifting

over the core of a mysterious world —

blue eyes reflecting

the currents of my oceanic body.

& my mind dips into fantasy

of our tectonic plates pressing,

crumbling at our jagged edges,

forming our own Pangea

populated by cedar waxwing,

black-crowned night heron,

honeybees — a flutter

of monarchs migrating south

from Iowa —

Fairfield to Angangueo —

my navel a cup plant,

pooling his sacred wetness —

reflecting the light of the moon

in our cloudless night sky.

James R. Davidson is a poet and activist living in Fairfield, Iowa. His style exemplifies a metamodern approach to transcendentalism — a style from which he explores the intersections of queerness, spirituality, and ecology. James is a BFA in Creative Writing student at Maharishi University. He is also the founding editor-in-chief of the university's literary magazine, Metafore.