Beulah Land
Beulah Land by debgrant
Sometime last month it happened.
I don’t know when exactly, but I knew it happened
like the New Hampshire river rock happened
to land in my house in Texas.
A fist-sized boulder of granite, unremarkable in
the deep part of a mountain stream of crystal coldness.
The rock winked at me with its mica eye.
I was smitten. I waded in and claimed this piece of land.
Beulah held my hand so I wouldn’t slip.
Beulah was my college professor.
She was private. Granite and mica.
Hard with thin bits that caught the sun.
She carved my mind.
Spilled open written words.
Invited me to walk forest paths and once, a mountain stream
in mystery and light.
At all the landslide moments,
she grounded me and cast bread and
light upon the waters.
Sometime last month,
when she was one year shy of one hundred,
Beulah landed at last.
The earth is less today, but
I have a river rock that winked at me
and I will carry on.
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