What I Remember of That Brief Time

Ducking under the barbed wire where it hung mangled by many crossings, dotted with coarse hair tufts snagged above limestone slabs; looking out across the high plateau toward Bitter Springs, toward Mt. Humphreys into the narrow rift below me and back at the dried stalks of grama grass patches. My hunger for freedom and the bliss of strength in my legs, some fine boots, the tungsten grip of sticks, striking sparks in the rock rubble under tread. The condor who flew over me, low, I felt the hush of air displaced, those long heavy wings spread wide, twice my height, the bird big as a hang glider, wingtip flight feathers manipulating the air one slight adjustment at a time as I said hello condor, and felt the fierce, spring wind slap against my face as the sun shone down again, and I traveled on wondering if I’d make it back out alive.

You would have loved it, darling, water roiling through the Gap of Dunloe, curtains plunged down ancient rocks, sheets of rain slapping in the mist. Bent sideways to the wind a maelstrom whipped a lash and sting against our cheeks.

Yet the burning red of mountain ash and hawthorn, flash of fuchsia and montbretia pierced the green and gray, the sheep serene. Exhilarated, our faces opened toward the unrelenting storm.

Drenched through our skins, soaked to the bone, ravenous for tea and scone.

None of their traits spared them from the powerful storm surge— those quarter-ton bodies insulated by thick qiviut, standing in a circle of defense.

Muskox, old, young, thirty-two in all, perished on that windswept landscape killed by the ocean as foreign to them as the tundra is to whales.

Surprised, soaked, the animals succumbed, some still standing, some toppled, frozen in sea water strewn over a quarter mile, on this mid-winter day.

Here is the fuzzy bottom, shy blush of peach, the ripe sunrise flesh of nectarine, apricot! my first peace-making with the color orange the healthy bruise of plum, and seedy blackberries staining my fingers down to the nail beds crimson purple this morning, cutting them into the deep blue bowl, the sun cutting triangles on the Chinese rug,

Old beaters with bald tires, uncertain headlights, one rusted enough I could see the road beneath the clutch The one I totaled, the first new one, a grey step-sided Chevy belonging to the man known as my first husband— I should have seen it as an omencrash begetting crash

The little dinged up Datsun, door handles so loose, one fell off into the hand of the valet opening night of the symphony, stolen later that night—a ridiculous choice The work-horse Ford, sky blue paint faded to aqua, the bench seat frozen so far back I sat on the very edge to depress the clutch, my head sinking below the steering wheel every time

I used to drive trucks in August to pick fruit windows down, down dirt roads blowing clouds of dust into orchards murmuring their click and buzz and whisper on the baking hillsides Heading home, juicy up to my elbows, bee-bait sticky, sweat drying in little trails, down my gritty neck, all those pits rattling on the floorboards.