Sierra Golden

Black Canyon

Between the apple picker’s cabin and the house
a rabbit the size of a teacup trembles. 

Junk piles up: decoy ducks, runner sleds, tricycles
bicycles, ice skates, wash tubs, milking stools, butcher block. 

The garden spills bluebells on the pasture. I inherited
my mother’s fears and a desire to wear flawless pearls 

while the peonies unfurled on schedule, their ruched skirts
riotous but their faces demure and drooping in place. 

* 

There is fear in being here, forbidden place
where everyone nods at a bird’s passing grace. 

What my mother would curse as common. Meaningless
collection. Everything is always the same, she exclaims 

from her high hill. I feel my father’s ghost. Though not dead
he’s away, tossing nets into the hard ocean, harvesting whatever 

he can, and when I listen, I hear my brother in the middle distance
stumbling through dry scrub, greasewood, mesquite, the burnt pine. 

* 

I wait near an invisible gate for permission to enter
for the lilac to bow and the tulips and turnips and tomatoes. 

I wait for the creek to run silent, the swallows to settle.
I wait for nothing to be common and say, Then, I’ll enter. 

What do I call the part of me watching as you take my hand? We enter
and point and point and point at everything in bloom. You rollcall 

the birds, conjure an improbable flare from a box of blue
glass, a wagon wheel, tin pail, thirteen lunch boxes on a shelf. 

* 

Pine trees, slender as pencils, sway over our bed. A frog
squawks for his mate. The flowers slowly close for the day 

furling in on their impossible sweet nectars. Mosquitoes
bats, shadows circle and twist in the darkening sky. 

The creek roars. An owl I’ve never seen whets the night.
I imagine his eyes round as the stones in my heart. I lie 

awake. The moon spills down. Fear like a fire atop the canyon
walls: I won’t make it here. This is a great sadness. 

* 

Still I wait for a crack of light, count your breaths
rattling in a cool gray. Dawn sighs with you. 

The sound a mosquito makes in a bat’s belly, the sound
of a flower dropping its seeds, of stars flicking out. 

The moon rests on the steppe, then disappears. I wait
for you to wake, curl around you like a soup spoon. 

Your Black Canyon, the soil as ripe as the apples it grows.
You’ve brought me here, the path behind us disappearing. 

* 

I wanted the shelter of being perfectly alone, if only
for a moment, and then: Quince. Forsythia. Wild apple. 

Weeping cherry. Stinging nettle. Balsamroot. Arnica.
Lilac. Dogwood. Bridal wreath. Lupin. Unidentified yellow 

songs I want to call tallulahs. Whatever we pick
we name. In a collection, all the broken things 

become beautiful. Let us collect each other
despite the disfigured shapes we inhabit. 

* 

Because this is not a common world, I pick you, name you
husband. Because each blossom, cowbird, ball jar, apple box, pickup 

petunia stitches to another, we hike the canyon wall in the morning
cold, the sun warming us like a fire, two bluebirds on a snag. 

In the garden, I wash off the ghosts of my family, desires
like spider web. I say let these be the moments that marry us 

not to each other, but in joy, to the world. I sing now, let these be
the moments that marry us, each to the other, and in joy, to the world. 

Back to Issue XV…