Dear JB,
In the sweet bellow of the evening we relearn our walking.
A rim runs the riverbank and flattens to a small path
where the wood smoke leans along the valley.
I sleep a little here to know how stars might pierce
this darkness. Sister grass sleeps
in the near moon, no dusk lit to this cold.
To keep in the pattern of such small birds,
to be a universe,
I try to remember the laughter of someone who has died.
A border opened for the hour.
In the field all delicates are spined.
Worn rosehip. Long grass. Sage.
The aspen let their leaves move on
like children. Or young girls lifting their half moon nails
to cover their laughing teeth, or dishes running into the sink,
sweet pools of voice.
Only magpies skirt the blue, inland from the sea where you keep.
I can smell that sea’s fog, how it cradles the edge of the continent
like the gray that laces your hair.
All rock is basalt, but not all river stones can come home to sit.
Let the night echo back its station.
What are we in the dry hills?
Catkin, circadian, the slight cool where the cottonwood lifts up
its thousand mouths.
The careful line of our feet meaning we are true.
May you walk, dear poet, lifted by that western light.
With much affection,
Jenni
– Jennifer Passaro
