ISSUE: Summer 1994
wind
is the language of this morning,
as I’m climbing
Me-a-pa-te, “hill that is hard
to go around,” high above
surrounding grasslands, badlands.
White-throated swallows in midmorning heat
loop and chitter over rock face or juniper,
my feet pausing
at each edge of bluff, enough
to almost call me either
upwards in ecstatic flight
or down in death. My breath is lost
between the points of Saddle Rock;
I’m squinting into
wingbeat of magpie,
sussurant grasstem, timeless
sunlight, sky—
is the language of this morning,
as I’m climbing
Me-a-pa-te, “hill that is hard
to go around,” high above
surrounding grasslands, badlands.
White-throated swallows in midmorning heat
loop and chitter over rock face or juniper,
my feet pausing
at each edge of bluff, enough
to almost call me either
upwards in ecstatic flight
or down in death. My breath is lost
between the points of Saddle Rock;
I’m squinting into
wingbeat of magpie,
sussurant grasstem, timeless
sunlight, sky—
Imagine the earth as self-
elegy, memory articulated
into headland, stone,
volcanic ash and harder caprock, life
translated slowly into layers.
White stone against bright sky, I
can’t hear the words not spoken, only know
this is memory, this
could be grief.
