My father believed the bedrock beneath our ranch—

once an immense sea—

was still alive, that natural rhythms persisted

in its sluggish consolidation.

He taught me to listen for echoes of breaking surf,

but I couldn’t hear them—

even at night with the wind quiet and my ear pressed 

to an outcropping.

He believed the gravitational pull of a full perigee moon 

could still move

the old limestone.  He called it, land tide.  I thought 

that, too, improbable,

until one night the moon rose so full of light we could 

have counted the calves

in our pasture.  Then, when its bottom edge caught 

the crest of a hill,

and just as I felt the prairie lift and inch sideways 

beneath my feet,

he said, There. That’s it.

 

I have never recovered from that night, or the weight

of his hand on my shoulder.

 

H. C. Palmer