Sienna

brown and beige abstract painting

The ground accepts the poem—
how organic matter moves
like elegies personified,
how minerals break
lines
to build cadence,
how water runs like imagery
to show what is
and what isn’t,
how air demands feeling
the breath
of living and dead organisms
in the cool draft
of morning.


I don’t know what
the ground is made of,
but I know its surface—
the part we can see,
the part we can let touch us
and stain our skin,


I know that ground
is the language
from where the poem comes.

Poem by Kristin Yates

Kristin Yates is an award-winning poet, artist, cat cuddler, porch sitter, and work in progress from Lewisville, North Carolina. Her poems have previously appeared in Salem College’s Incunabula, The New Verse News, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Writerly Magazine. She can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/beautefantasy/