Mist snakes the mountains,
uncoiled, unhurried.
The moon waxes and wanes.
Storms
sometimes never come,
sometimes never go.
^^ ^
Dry soil softens
between my lips. My mouth deepens
into a well filled with roots.
^^ ^ ^^
Call it a life, this cloak intended for our backs.
If this happened to us or long ago
or is someday going to happen
I cannot say.
I drink tea brewed from last summer’s flowers.
Petals re-open
in the pot before pouring.
^^
The ditch fat with runoff,
snowmelt
un-dressing granite,
icing my hands into hooks.
^
On the dunes,
every step shifts the surface.
All this reaching for a resting place
we likely passed years ago.
We sink a little even as we climb.
^ ^^
Another thread unwinds.
All my reparations
made in darkness,
in the space in my chest
before the candles are lit.
There by the creek there is ice
and beneath ice, ripples,
then three mule deer
bending their heads to drink.
Copyright © 2022 by Kyce Bello. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 4, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.