after Camille Dungy

One: Winter

It is pre-dawn, and the land is singing. Black Oak and Shagbark Hickory
drum basslines with their January pulses. Sandhill Cranes call dawn
to a canopy of fog from the sandbars of the Wisconsin River. Snow softens
the ssk, ssk of skis. Huff, haah. My warm lungs sing back
through the boughs of wintering pines. They give way to savanna
and my skis sweep Monarda and Little Bluestem to Earth.

In this remnant winter, I am quiet on the hill. Over the grumble
of the freeway and the clamor of our urgent world,
I am listening.

Two: Summer

What can a prairie teach us about kinship? In June,
I arrive to this place with the whole world freshly handed to me,
its perennial horrors and incessant pleas for my generation
to fix things, make something from humanity’s scorched earth
wrongdoings. In this acrid overwhelm is where I meet
my prairie. Goldenrod and Ariana, Echinacea and Sophie,
Milkweed and Catherine, Spiderwort and Lily. New siblings,
each blossoming with a brilliance so revitalizing, it sets me on my feet.

They are who first teach me to breathe slowly. To go forth diligently
with the patience of native bees, doing what small work we can
with honesty, humility. We accept our responsibility in disrupting the landscape,
sawing Glossy Buckthorn and torching desiccated Dropseed. We learn to live
that edict older, even, than the Leopold ethic — to be part of the land-community.

Three: Autumn

What can a river teach us about time? Sliding seaward on a warm November evening, 
she tells us transience is the wisdom of a river-body. Her spring floods carry
invasive reed-canary seed, her summer current shapes new maps with sand
and tannin stains, her autumn water rinses burn scars away, and winter
is her breathing — freezing and opening.

On that sacred and singular evening, the backs of my sister’s knees
braid the ancient stream. Water, from when the glaciers
scoured the quartzite hills, and the river laid her bed
in the Great Marsh. Water, from when the cranes and the Ho-Chunk
lived on her banks; from when their land was razed; from when, resilient,
they made their way back home. Water, that asks for a new word
to be carved for the world — let it be wonder, the river says.
I dip my hands into the current and watch the ripples change.

Four: Spring
What can soil teach us about hope? The world around
us has always been fracturing. Four billion years
of tectonic plates separating and converging. The glaciers built
these sand counties, and over them people have written histories
of savanna oak openings and wilderness mythologies. Of colonial farmsteads
and Indigenous homecomings. The soil we stand on holds
the roots, bones and seeds of both empires and communities.

So I return to what is before me. I lay down in March’s ephemeral spring
and imagine, for a quiet moment, I could save everything. My siblings
join me. Bloodroot, and Chipping Sparrow, and human beings. Listening,
we rest our bodies like palms against the face of the Earth. Our presence
good disturbance, an indelible belonging — content
with what we will create. We breathe together,
all of us. Huff, haah. It is pre-dawn,
and the land is singing.

About the poet

Inspired by the human-environment relationships she witnessed growing up in the woods and lakes of east-central Minnesota, Cadence Eischens’ poetry is steeped in the sensuality, interconnectivity, and resiliency of the natural world. Her poems entangle human emotions and experiences with the landscape, resisting the classification of people and nature as separate. She embraces the land as kin, and invites others to do the same.

Eischens graduated from Knox College in 2024 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Anthropology and Sociology; she currently works as an Education and Communications Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Follow her on LinkedIn for updates on her latest endeavors in environmental stewardship and art: www.linkedin.com/in/cadence-eischens.

This poem first appeared on the website of the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Agate extends its thanks to Cadence and the Foundation for granting permission to republish. All photos are the author’s, with the exception of the Sandhill Cranes on “One: Winter” (Jackson Newman) and the Chipping Sparrow on “Four: Spring” (Laura Coglan).