TIMBERLINE: Poem

TIMBERLINE

Looking up at the ruins of them,

ragged edges those dead trees

raise against the sky, and beyond

them the cut of a hawk’s wing,

the curve of the river

of cloud shapes, I’m likely to squander

this morning with dreaming them

turned back to women again, having grown

old along with these mountains

and left here to die like the rest of us.

I’d sit for hours and watch,

if I could, how the wind through their branches

keeps trying to make them sway,

supple as girls again, line-dancing

over the rocky horizon of Snowbird.

But not much of morning’s left.

I should be piecing a new quilt or mending

my husband’s socks. I should be stirring

the beans left to scorch in the pot.

What does wind whisper

up there of death? Or is dancing

the gist of it? As for my need to bear witness

to all I cannot keep from dying,

the truth is I’ve never liked loose ends.

Just look at my quilts: a succession

of rings, wreaths, and whirligigs.

Threaded since daybreak,

my needle waits here on the table

as if to remind me how stitches too small

to be known save by touch

of the thread toiling under my fingers

can fashion a way out of one death and into

another. So stand up, I tell myself.

Shake out your stiff limbs and sway

like your sisters up there on the ridge,

still in line for the next dancing lesson.

from BLACK SHAWL, LSU Press, 1992