
"Elegy to Cold Springs Canyon "
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from Volume 5: Wild Mercury
by Gudrun Bortman
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First hike after the January 9th 2018 debris flow
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Where sweet bays, sycamores and alders
braided —
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where water purled over the lip
of boulders into leaf-speckled pools, calling
frogs and newts and us—
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there is a wound blasted into the mountain.
The creek’s canyon scoured side to side.
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Hard silence.
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We scramble down-creek, mere specks
in this vast bed of rocks, this moment—
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but there, in fire-blackened scree
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lilies
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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.
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Gudrun has another poem, "Die Elbe," in Volume 5, available for purchase in our bookstore.
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