taylor graham

 

 

TO THE EDGE

Under the mountain's dome,
a Lost Lake captures images in reverse:
sky framed by tree-line,
your face rippled as if something
turned you aside
from the trail, draws you
to a stone portal: a grassy swale
beckoning between sarsen boulders.
They open to a wider light,
to wind, and the far-below call
of water speaking
in snowmelt and fall. Down-
canyon’s deep with echo,
a scream of rushing river.
You’ll follow it, forgetting
how water makes changelings
of us if we dare its overlooks; if we
imagine for an instant
we could fly.

 

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library, 2012) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her latest book is What the Wind Says (Lummox Press, 2013), poems about living and working with her canine search partners over the past 40 years.

 

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