wordy wednesday: poem of the day

My friend and former teaching buddy Clara just published a beautiful poem called "Northing" over at Hip Pocket Press. It reminded me so much of the trip Jason and I took to Alaska two summers ago as a belated celebration of finishing his Ph.D. program, getting a tenure-track gig, and moving across the country to start our new life navigating the waters of academia.

Here's the full text of the poem, which was published in HPP's Canary literary journal. Happy Wednesday!

NORTHING - Clara Quinlan

Isn’t the ice in the distance traveling,
doesn’t it know of my approach,

the red, jagged trees a painter’s stroke
sweeping from the highway, rushing over
each hill. This far, have I already come

without you, a faint disappearance
into black, brittle limbs

collapsing from fire, here
a turn to marrow, to my own interminable
exit; have I not coveted you, dark drifts

on the tongue, spine icicled, mindless,
my body endures, the scallops of mountains blued

without trees, the river’s green glass
advancing from the glacier, spilling against
the road, isn’t it cracking, isn’t it

heaving, when was I told to wrest the song,
pass through in mute, alkaline and silt,

breath’s vaporous fingers
a new hour, an unknown stage, the ice
far above and tremulous. When I place

my hand upon the chandeliered river
enter this: while there is still time, tell me

--

how might the end be spared? Hands
indulgent, bucketing all that is strewn
wild, trafficking your many forms, the barren
flesh sings, crystallized, trees tilt
and claw at the relics of light. Spooling up,
a congregation of
white butterflies from the grasses
render the air, demand reprieve against

the vast, the tundra
uninterrupted, glaciers yawning into kingdoms and how

might the slight wing survive?
To put my mouth upon

the prayer that keeps you
and devour, your fingers struck gold my love

--

with conquering. Let nothing come
between, our stride  thickened under

jagged bush, gnarled shoots
mask the creek we search for, we hear
as glass clinking somewhere into

collapse. You who know no end.
The earth will refuse, rocks caught

under sponged lichen beneath our feet as if
the ground should boil. Sky cobbled
in thermals insisting solitude. Give up

your small narrative as time measures itself
only in the empty space our bodies

cleave. A colony of Kittiwakes rises
from the broken black stalks, hip high,
syntax of wings scattering the luckless

vapors of cloud, do not mistake this
for mercy, joy you can attend, the vital damp of green

banished. Toward indulgence, the tendriled snow
atop the mountain cuts its host in faint bones.
Where bounty still abides, bring me

--

born from winter, a system of white mapping the flesh
unwanted, feathered and receding, how far

again should I have followed? You,

wealth of debris, gild the sutured room;
windtorn and willing, I hunger beyond frozen waters.

© Clara Quinlan