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Jan Beatty Page 3
Notes on a Nevada Flood
for Don
There’s a mountain
outside my window & a
lake full
with glacial water &
it’s
flooding in my
heart—chamber by
chamber—
I’m a woman in the
middle
of my life running
backwards towards the
center,
the master flood.
Piles of sandbags,
holding back
the washing of the gone
dreams.
So many things miles
off—my husband at home
with his brilliant
sweetness—
A mountain outside my
window &
a dark blue lake full—
& close to here, on an
old forest road,
a woman is walking to
get her mail—
she will hear today that
& I’m thinking of her
flowered dress &
mountain
boots, her wondrous life
on the edges—
Who will write her
story, where does her
life go—
all the lives above—the
swirling below.
There’s a mountain
outside my window
but all I want:
the flood of heart in a
closed room with you—
your arm flung sloppily
across me,
hitting my face, your
other hand playing
guitar
in deep sleep.
Oh, wild dreaming one—if
you were here,
what would you say?
That I’m swirling
towards death in my own
eddying ideas?
No, you would say, go
to sleep, are you okay?
(the only blessing I
need tonight)
Goodnight to everyone
alive —
Wherever I am, I’m
filled with sediment:
with tough, dirty
Pittsburgh
where the mountains of
black rock &
half mills are
carapaces.
Night coming now,
& the hills mounding up
as we get closer
to the continental
divide of you & I —of
death—
No stopping the water:
almost pristine in the
quiet.
—Jan Beatty, The
Switching/Yard,
University of Pittsburgh
Press, 2013
© Copyright, 2013,
Jan Beatty, |