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The View from Pisgah
Beatrix Gates
I left my half-glasses in the Pisgah
State Forest
slipped from the side of my midnight
blue vest
growing colder
all night inside the outline
magnifying.
It seemed only right
my having just turned 50
the three of us sitting together
as the light pulled down into the
earth
after our circular walk through the
woods
on Hallowe’en night.
We could just make out the duskiness
of our features, the gray purple
of the trees and blueing shapes
between
sponging up what was left.
I’d heard that day on the radio
about the origin of bones in "bonfire"—
how the cattle were herded through
the smoke-laden air of the big fires
so the insects would be killed off
before they moved into close quarters
for the winter.
I take a stick in my hand,
study the blade like the curve
at the back of the shoulder
to feel the relation between my arms,
to retrieve the fire between:
image of the bonefire.
Next day, I go alone to retrieve my
glasses
just where I thought,
climb the rise in midday sun
run my hands through the matt of grass
and milkweed hulls
hold the pods up to the breeze
to watch the seed heads fly
then bury their ticking hearts under
pine
beside the old tree graves.
I lie back down, unwilling to leave
the sky
of sudden blue warmth
ascending milkweed’s dark brown seeds.
Is this what my glasses stored
in the night? I close my eyes
and see muskrat, fox, dog and deer,
gopher, possum, mink and crow,
otter, oxen, big-horned sheep,
eyes gold, brown, green,
striped and staring
as if the hill itself recites the
feeding,
nesting, hunting paths of all who’ve
come before.
We hear each other out.
The record stands
in the bright warm day as the animals
sniff and snort
move through the rise
the red black brown marrow
the rotting earth
the walking backs of mountains.
Quay note: In this issue, also see Gates'
"The View from Pisgah"
and
Translation and collaboration in
poetry: An interview with Beatrix Gates.
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