You or I or the air says deeper: breathe; the brain needs blood. Mountain-sick, the moon
comes nearer, giving in. More
blood? Isn’t it full? Where to put the mountain in relation
to
the shadow, the human, the hunt, the hole in the fence? Almanac says, if there is no death
in five days, there will be water. What for, if not to smother or wash out a mouth
before it enters silent? Moon, moon, keep moving your fingers and they become a wheel
beneath the tiny legs of the stonefly. Moon opening, moon closing, nymph skin crawling over
the riverbed, you like to say it first. In the mountains, it’s easy to get caught watching
something you shouldn’t. It doesn’t hurt the snow.
27 The Paris-American
Beth Bachmann is the author of Temper (Pitt Poetry Series, 2009), winner of the AWP Donald Hall Poetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her new manuscript won the 2011 Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for a book in progress. Find her at www.bethbachmann.com
