This Day*

            Hocking Hills, Ohio

Down from Old Man’s Cave, we ascend
sky steps of sculptured stone,
a staircase spiraling up into air
over Queer Creek’s low oboe glug.
Deep pools mirror late spring green.

Away from water, it’s nearly silent.
Hovering cliffs oversee the glen,
witness we mere mortals scabbling up
and down banks, squeezing between stones.
One misstep could break bones.

We behold a boulder gripped tight
by tree roots: a woven world.
Through a tunnel cut through rock,
we sidestep, straddle then splash,
emerge into light, re-birthed at last.

These gifts, this time
will never come again.
This day and no other,
this prayer and no other,
for the world to recover,
continue to thrive with
or without us,
abiding,
enduring,
alive.
–Ed Davis

*Originally published in Alchemy and Miracles: Nature Woven into Words, edited by Cassandra Arnold. 

Ed Davis has published poems, stories and essays and poems in many anthologies and journals. His poetry collection, Time of the Light, was released by Main Street Rag Press in 2013. His latest novel, The Psalms of Israel Jones (West Virginia University Press 2014), won the 2010 Hackney Award for an unpublished novel.