AND THEN THE SKY

by Katherine West

Ground level, nothing

enters the wilderness, except feet—

horse feet, human feet.  We start

at the river and work our way up

and through how many worlds?

From yellow willows through pink mini-canyons

through tawny and scarlet grasslands made by

fire and decorated with skeletons

to foot-tingling vertigo cliffs dropping

from white heights straight down to

vertical death straight out to horizontal

eye-flight—180 degrees of mountain waves

lapping at the sky.

And just like being lost at sea, I can feel

the lack of humanity.  My human

radar finds nothing to ping against, no

roofs glinting in the sun, no

distant roar of traffic, or guns,

just the last of the falling leaves ticking

against each other like light rain on the roof,

catching the late sun like a flock of distant

birds at five o'clock.

Behind me, the pale half-moon rises silently

in the afternoon east—and I remember

how she rose with Venus on Halloween

when the first cold came and

made them very  bright—still brighter

than the new, too-fast moving, human

Stars that surround them—and I remember

that there is no wilderness in the sky

as the F16s detonate their weekly flight.

* * * * *

"And Then The Sky" was first published in New Verse News which nominated it for a Pushcart Prize.

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness and performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, and New Verse News.