The Memory of Earth

The Memory of Earth



Joanna Yonder 11/2025

The final light of day goodbyes the mountaintops
and, below me, this valley slowly sinks beneath
the surface of night's shadow.

This age-old waning of the sun
has come for eons over this same view:

Mountains slowly smaller over millennia,
the sun, by fractions and particles,
smaller too.

The only new thing in this equation is me!

Standing here, wondering.

What even are the names
of these peaks above me?
Where might the constellations rise over their shoulders
in a few hours’ time?
How the moonlight will illuminate what crags,
what valleys.

How old are the mountains? Thirty million years maybe?
Or older?
Certainly the river hasn’t told me yet,
no matter how it chatters over its unfathomed bed of stones.

I’m here to listen, mountains. And to remember with you

that one way to be new,
even when one is very, very old,

is simply to be witnessed in new eyes.