Poem from Squaw Valley Review, published Summer 2010

Echolocation

 

 

 

Alpine air, mist and rust, our hands

gripping the railing against the guttural pull

down. We can feel the rending

in our bones on rock, the certainty;

add our sounds to the waterfall’s screamsong.

 

We have arrived here spent but triumphant,

climbed through the brume of Digger Pine

and Incense Cedar. I’m surprised at our endurance,

at my mother—her patient, persistent steps.

 

I remember her years ago at Niagara—

I was too young to know to dread that pulling,

ran full tilt to the water’s edge,

a skipping, crazed dash, flung

myself against the smooth guardrail

in an imitation swan dive. 

How the water roared.

How she screamed in terror;

in her mother’s eye, there was no rail

and I was not made of bird, but stone.

 

Now she’s closer to the edge than me,

her head tucked, knees bent, hands clutch

the steel fence, pink-nailed toes crunch back

from where the rock meets a thin hiss of air.

 

In that worn spur where glaciers dove

for a moment, she leaves us,

and duty, and wrenching love.