“Crosswind” by AM Ringwalt

 

 

Crosswind, not
California. Metal

vessel hurtling up
mountain.

A screen tells me
my elder died—

my father’s voice
repeats it.

I drive over
land and wish

for folding road,
a direct path to hold

her frail and
breathing.

This road turns
in circuitous cuts

through stone,
through trees.

 

*

 

Crosswind: like
volta.

Crosswind: like the force
that steers a spiral.

 

*

 

The song here is the sound of branches at the tops of trees
colliding into each other, ricocheting, leafless chimes.

 

*

 

Spirals—which way to turn—represent the fragility in an open space.
– Louise Bourgeois

 

*

 

Don’t look left / the steep
slope cutting

Don’t look / yet I wonder
what is left?

 

*

 

I’m in a car but I’m trying
to talk about the cemetery.

I’m in a car but I’m trying
to talk about the calves—

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOtoo pure—
climbing to the right of this bridge.

 

*

 

I’m in a car but I’m trying
to talk about sunlight, the way

her eyes creased
to behold it.

Now, the fur of calves
like mirrors to the sun.

 

*

 

Crosswind:
to learn of death.

But I’m trying to talk
about a land of quartz.

 

*

 

Crosswind, you steer the car.
My gaze is straight. My mind

a blank / I yearn
OOOO(for what?)

: thickening green / a song

to turn the landscape
into quartz,

song for crystalline slopes
instead of stone bone-hued.

 

*

 

Crosswind, you cut through
dreams of afterlife.

Here, in lack, I yearn
for mirrors reflecting rock

until everything
can be seen through,

sung through,
against this sky

thinning out
(thinning out)

to welcome the dead.