Notebook Entry

Last frost. A ripple through white pasture

tracks the first of April sun


onto bulldozed pavement. Old

yellow line skids under juniper


down to the culvert where rust

blends with the brook's red silt.


On a spur of leftover highway I walk

swirling ink between parallel lines.


Letters flow to the tap of my pace

and a page


cracks into hubris.

Shall I envy those who speak to a god


at prescribed times,

cry Satan, id, or primeval snake


at the base of the brain?

At every shrine I am a tourist.


Long brown lizard pods of catalpa

click like skins drying


in a wind that nibbles at twigs

to harrow the sounds of falling.


I could almost swim in this wind,

swim in the net strung by blue


ropes of my veins. Whatever woods I probe,

a single forest tallies.


A leaf takes one audible step

to the earth.


[In Keeping Him Alive, Silver Apples Press, 1990]

© Copyright, 2014, Charlotte Mandel.
All Rights Reserved.