Alongside the gorge
— Laura Vogt
in the gloss of morning, with wind
in the sage-green saltbrush and swollen
shadows mushrooming, slow and mottled,
a cornflower blue bird crackles, a warbler
just beyond sight—the ease of quiet,
the opening of pause, the reach of space—
and I breathe. Beyond, stretched across
the rust-red scarp, the plateau dull green
and craggy, a remembrance of other ways
to be shatters up my back. Of clogged
streets and layered sounds, of coiled white
cords and a pile of to-dos, of all that weighs
on me and all that I yearn for. Lines of shadow,
lines of sunlight. Now, in the softness
of midmorning, the boundary murky and unsettled,
I cannot spot where brightness yields to dark.
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