they plodded, discovered
rivers whose names we always
forgot; in the winters
they died of scurvy.

When I reached that other
shore finally, statistics
and diseased labels multiplied
everywhere in my head

space contracted, the
red and silver
heroes had collapsed inside
their rubber suits / the riddled
buildings were decaying
magic

I turn back, search
for the actual, collect lost
bones, burnt logs
of campfires, pieces of fur.

Highest altitude

Here, our possessions are cut
to what we carry: plates,

blanket, our maps, basket with food,
last thought: lake where we waded
in the green glacial water.

The view to the side, below,
would be, as they say, breath-

taking; if we dared to look.
We don’t dare. The curved

ledge is crumbling, the melting snow
is undermining the road,

in fear everything
lives, impermanence
makes the edges of things burn

brighter. The rocks are purple, heart-
red. We hold our eyes tight
to the line; the reference point

not the mountains but the moving
car, and each other.

A morning

Because we couldn’t sleep we went on
though at first I could see little;

behind us the sun rose
white and cold; the early
wind came out of the sun.

In front of us the low hills, yellow-
grey grass dunes, and then
the mountains: hard, furrowed
with erosion, cloudless, old, new,
abrupt in the first light.

With shrunken fingers
we ate our oranges and bread,
shivering in the parked car;

though we knew we had never
been there before,
we knew we had been there before.

A soul, geologically

The longer we stay here the harder
it is for me to see you.

Your outline, skin
that marks you off
melts in this light

and from behind your face
the unknown areas appear:

hills yellow-pelted, dried earth
bubbles, or thrust up
steeply as knees

the sky a flat blue desert,

these spaces you fill
with their own emptiness.

Your shape wavers, glares
like heat above the road,

then you merge and extend':
you have gone,
in front of me there is a stone ridge.

Which of these forms
have you taken:

hill, tree clawed
to the rock, fallen rocks worn
and rounded by the wind

You are the wind,
you contain me

I walk in the white silences
of your mind, remembering

the way it is millions of years before
on the wide floor of the sea

while my eyes lift like continents
to the sun and erode slowly.

Habitation

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

Woman skating

A lake sunken among
cedar and black spruce hills;
late afternoon.

On the ice a woman skating,
jacket sudden
red against the white,

concentrating on moving
in perfect circles.