74
CIRQUE
Scott Davidson
The Space Between Houses
Steady as June erasing itself blue as the heart of a house being emptied Say the sky completely smears the wind assumes a body. How can we claim to know where we are? Last night I saw something gray, inexhaustible rise at dusk from our new back yard. Later in the kitchen I sang along to the Thompson Twins, danced the way I dance alone and felt I knew this place from before. Maybe I should be sleeping more but I feel like each new task could shred our veil of resolve. How many loads could be left by now? How may boxes, how many trips down these pointlessly difficult stairs? How long till we sit and watch our street revealed smell what rises hold what blooms until the overcast breaks above and we sink like weather into home?
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Janet C Hickok
Steve Dieffenbacher
Whitebark Pines
I thought they could endure anything, bowing easily under clifftop blasts, secure within themselves to a passive resistance along ridgelines while others broke. In summer, I’d hike easily past them, mimic their twists on each switchback, learning the power of giving way. Now their tips rot from blister-rust and beetles gnaw their spirits. Born with a bark of iron, late kings of the treeline, they die where time once stopped. Today, birds who built lives around their seeds migrate to higher peaks, and I who waited out storms safe beside them, watch their long-formed wisdom wither.