Poems by Rachel Jamison Webster

Grass Dancer

by Rachel Jamison Webster

From Canary Summer 2015

Rachel lives within walking distance of Lake Michigan's beaches. She grew up on Lake Erie, on a ridge that was once the shore before the lake receded. There, in her sandy backyard, she found flint arrowheads and cooking tools from the region’s earlier residents.

We were the ones who entered the circle first, who tamped down the grass for the jingle dancers, the crazy dancers, and the grandmothers. The denting was a kind of dull stinging, a kind of being alive. The dance would leave a green seeping all over your feet, the juice of the grasses brightening the soft soles of your moccasins. And you could felt the grass singing as it was flattened, its life entering the suck of your feet, moving up the rising rivers of your legs and out again, into the stars that were your hands. That was being alive, that was life, the way you could thank the sun sinking into you. The way you could feel the life of the grass that drank the sun and rain, wanting to give and give itself to life. The earth was threading up into you, you who you were with the others, the earth.