Poem of the Week

“...c'est le moment de parler de vous, chemins qui vous effacez de cette terre victime.”
—Yves Bonnefoy

One gestures to a blue
fold in the hills, meaning
follow your heart. Another scrawls
follow your nose into the raspberry canes
and may later show itself to be
the deer's own way to the water.
Some will speak
only to the third and fourth ears that persist,
vestigially, in the feet.
One way or another
they feed us a line, and we go,
dithering over the outwash or angled as an oar
into the forest, headed for the top,
the lake, the photo
opportunity, the grave of the trapper
who lived all alone and trained a moose
to pull his sleigh.
Strange marks on a far slope turn out,
hours later, to have been your zigzag path ascending,
earning every inch the waterfall beside it spends
like a hemorrhage. And always
the thrill of the pause, when your eye drinks
and your heart pounds and your legs
imagine roots, when your whole life,
like a posse, may catch up with you and tumble
headlong into the moment.
You may wish to say something to it, but your tongue
seems to be turning to an alder twig
and you must wait for wind.