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Tag: geology
Bread
We walk out for the view,
a mug of Irish tea and the paper,
to celebrate the old miracles:
the crust of the Hogback, red as brick,
even with the weather coming in,
its gnarled ridges alongside the new grass,
the gun-blue lake
filling and emptying.
Heat and water and milled earth
did this landscape’s cooking.
You weren’t thinking of them
when you baked this morning,
mixing seed and almond flour,
made a well and poured the liquid in,
paid no attention to the other magic —
that’s a poet’s job:
those massive ridges buckling in the fire,
or the snowmelt topping up
the bowl of the reservoir
they submerged a whole town for,
drowned the trees
and the everyday miracles of memories /
a weathered sign
is all that’s left of Stout.
Your bread sits by the window, cooling,
beaten and belching,
and breathing out.
Articulate
I speak the way I write,
but more slowly,
sorting and disposing of
five different ways
of saying something,
while my companion,
who really
only wanted a brief chat,
ages.
He grows hair in places where
there shouldn’t be any,
where before he was bald.
And meanwhile,
the tectonic plates
of the Colorado Plateau
adjust,
dinosaur bones surface,
sea turtles and bristlecone pines
complete entire life cycles.
“How should I put this?” I say,
when a city or two has fallen
into the ocean swell.
My friend is sallow now,
his skin cool, unresponsive.
“It’s coming,” I assure him.
“Too late…too late for me,” he replies.
“Is there anything
you want me to pass along?”
I finally say.
But he is quiet,
eyes staring, mouth dry.
Too bleak and beautiful 