44.4 longitude, 68.6 latitude.
The coast of what is now called Maine.

 

I write to you, Sibyl, surrounded by birds. I write outside, before the storm,
with the crow, pine warbler, Blackburnian warbler, chipping sparrow, red-eyed vireo, chickadee. Lapis lazuli fills me.

 

 

I have been told that before recorded time you came to new mountains, caves, and waters from Egypt, and you still dwell in these places. That you are one of ten. That you are infinite.

I have found traces of you in the color blue: midnight, cyan, deep. Fringed legs, cloven hooves, serpent in your hand.

 

 

7,129 feet above sea level

In the mountains, you rise above me as I kneel at the mouth of your cave and pour honey into the cracks. Large black-winged birds pass in front of the solstice sun. You come to me in the form of high-altitude moths that pepper the rock. Fathoms down, a small icy river runs through crevices. The river sings through the ravine. You rest here, dripping your beaded tears.

 

 

Sibyl, can we talk about the body? My body is many bodies, future and past. My body is text, textural. Sequined, web-footed, fragile, leaking. My body is fleeting. What is left is the record of bodies.

I reach to touch unseen forces, groundwater, water table. My body is the dowsing rod. Divination, divination, divination.

 

 

The deep sea, deep space, both are shades of indigo midnight.

You speak in the voices of granite and bee, oak tree, hermit thrush, whale, fungus, salt and rockweed. In the slow dance of seaweed in the current.

 

 

In caves, the sweep of antlers. The handprint, veil of manganese pigment blown over the stencil of a human hand. The most elemental and elegant gesture of creativity: I am here and I touch and I make. This hand from twenty thousand years ago, deep in the heart of the mountain, resembles mine.

 

 

Belly of a mountain that was once the sea floor. Inversions of place and time. Quickening, labor, birth. The cry, the suck, the milk. Glitter of a geode found on the side of the mountain. A dream: seeing the whale from the shore.

 

 

The ground is cream limestone. Milk of moons. Milk of rock. Of woolly messes. Of cocoons. My lover is made of calcium carbonate. He drinks lime, bathes in lime. The sea is upturned, mollusks overlaid in sleep. All the shells of all the years. The stone comes alive and boils. The oyster’s shell lies still in the dark. We sleep best under the weight of a hundred thousand bodies holding each other.

 

 

 

 

This folded landscape. This handwritten mountain of pleated limestone. Sheep’s milk, salmon, rain. The sea turned upside down. Burnt grasses a lively green. Wild peonies past their bloom. Loose rock. She is the wind, the birds, the rock, the moth, the electric blue gentian, this awe, this open heart. She is the mountain itself.

Sibyl, how can I open myself to be of service, through a stitch, a movement, a gesture? Use me, speak through me. My body is your medium, your nature. I seek you everywhere, in the aliveness of all things.

 

 

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Heather Lyon is a performance, video, and textile artist living off the grid in Maine. She holds a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Selected exhibitions include: deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum; Center for Maine Contemporary Art; State Silk Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia; and Lichtenberg Studios, Berlin.