on anselm’s trail at daybreak
by kathryn stripling byer

I looked down and saw her
beside the creek, suddenly young
again, wrapped in her bluecloak.
She stood gazing
over the pasture and up to the ridge
as if she knew these parts well
enough to name cove, valley,
switchback and summit,
each living thing native to this
place, the wild creatures
biding their time until spring
and the tame ones who still
dreamed
of stories round ancient fires,
under a blanket of sky stories
they could see spreading above
them if they raised their eyes.
Then she turned and I saw
she was not young at all,
but a woman my age,
with a slight limp from hip
joint or knee gone arthritic,
a staff in her hand on which
she leaned as I leaned on
mine. I knew Buffalo Cow Woman
came to the Sioux as a maiden
who aged with the seasons,
departing an old woman,
coming back hale as a young
girl. But our Lady? Here
she was, climbing the bank,
just ahead of me, bent now,
and walking more slowly,as I knew some
day I would
hobble this trail, breathing hard
but still breathing. She vanished
around the turn, back into fog
or a rock crevice, into the story
beginning again with herself
taking shape on this trail,
in this here and now,
this earth I walk into sunrise.