(after Mountain River by Lisa Curry, oil on canvas)
My feet know the glass tingle of cold waiting there in water
that used to be peaked snowpack, views of cragged horizon. Born
in July, my body craves always sun-doused prairies and beach
sand radiating from footsoles upward like a griddle. Tree-
climbing brings my skin that much nearer sun. But not
all beauty is heat—some is fish-chilled—as if warmth equals rot.
To stay cool as snowmelt is purity liquified,
reflecting heavens—their snowishness of cloud
their crystal blue or black black spacecold speckled in starlight.
My ankles anticipate the leaden cold water there waiting to
weigh them to the riverbed, as if fixed into ice bricks—chipped
from Lake Erie’s January, wagon-drawn to hay barns. Calf-deep
I would wish I knew how to fly-fish, whooshing line whirligigging
round and round my sky to plunk sinker into frigid ripples
and tempt the icy bodies flickering there in silvery zags
and zigs. The mountain peaks will always be nearer sun than I am
and the redwood trees’ uppermost scraggly needles like
unanswerable prayers. Were I to scramble up those peaks
skree would slip and skitter down to the river. Were I to climb those
trees, resin would gum my fingerprints. Today I am low
in lavender frost of what’s grounded and underground. Sun tries
to green what needs to be green here. Today the water is
a river. Today I am a woman, feet on cold stone, face to sun.
I probably didn’t climb trees as often as I remember doing.
