
"Elegy to Cold Springs Canyon "
from Volume 5: Wild Mercury
by Gudrun Bortman
First hike after the January 9th 2018 debris flow
Where sweet bays, sycamores and alders
braided —
where water purled over the lip
of boulders into leaf-speckled pools, calling
frogs and newts and us—
there is a wound blasted into the mountain.
The creek’s canyon scoured side to side.
Hard silence.
We scramble down-creek, mere specks
in this vast bed of rocks, this moment—
but there, in fire-blackened scree
lilies
unfurl spring-green leaves. A wisp of moth,
its turquoise wings like vapor, trembles on stone
and from above out of an un-burned oak
a canyon wren’s sweet spiral trill
shifts the day.
Gudrun has another poem, "Die Elbe," in Volume 5, available for purchase in our bookstore.