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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