And the Mountains Rising Nowhere

And there is a single boat on the water.

And the water is as still as the moment
………………………………………………before thought. And a bird

is about to fly, almost. And the wheat is gone,
harvested. And the fields are nothing more,
………………………………………………nothing less, without

wheat. And the sun hides behind a haze,
but it is there, it is there. And the mountains,

smooth as sculpting clay now hardened,
………………………………………………break into pieces around us.

And the trees hold up their branches, always.

—

Sermon

If a man is in a fruit, then when the fruit is taken and blessed, it is redeemed.
— Rabbi Amnon

If a woman is in a lake, then when the lake
is drained and filled in, it is rescued from water.

If a generation of boys is in trees, then when the trees
are felled and milled, the forest is delivered from shade.

If a party of lost girls darkens the air, then when the air
swells with toxins and haze, the sky is liberated from breath.

If a grandfather is in the soil, then when the soil
is dry and bare, the ground is saved from production.

If a grandmother is in the body, then when the body
is scathed and broken down, it is released from its own ruin.

If a man is in apple, then when the fruit is thieved
and cleaved, it is redeemed from the curse of being a man.

—

Inland Beach

Handful by handful, wind carries

sand over the tops of these lava flows.
My husband and I scale the barbed wire,

climb past sage and dry flowers.

Volcanic rock crumbles, shifts
under our feet, dark as a field

newly burned, dark as shame.

High above, the Twin Sisters
share the age-old story of marriage.

Coyote, their jealous husband,

turned them into pillars; turned
himself into a rock to watch over

them forever. Behind the pillars,

sand forms a waterless beach,
the river visible in the far

distance. We lie together in love

and regret, each of us a Coyote,
our fear turning us both to stone.

We rise and make our way to the twins

whose eroding bodies remind us
even love and its curses will pass.

—

Hanford Site, 1958

We find radioactive rabbit dung
up to two thousand acres from the site.
We find radioactive coyote dung.
We assume the coyotes found the rabbits
……………………………….in their burrows and ate them.

We have come to expect deaths out here
where no one will miss the dead—
more prey and predator where these came from.

We have come to expect—no, to anticipate—
……………………….the larger death for which we gather
while our wives give birth and keep house,
while we file in and out, in and out
…………………..………………………as we are told.

We burrow inside the site and inside our homes,
hoping no coyote will sniff us out
and put an end to this—
………………….our insurance, our bright future, our light.

—

No Sea Here

There are waves here, too. Each morning,
……………… … … ……..they pass from tree to tree.

These waves talk to the air the way a sea talks
……………………………………………to its shores.

Lower, the wheat makes its own waves,
………………………………which sound like streams.

The wheat’s movement reveals the shape
………………………………………of the land below

that, long ago, was carved, and carved again, by water.

—

“And the Mountains Rising Nowhere” first appeared in Barrow Street. The poem takes its title from Joseph Schwanter’s composition by the same name. I was listening to the piece and thinking about the stillness of the Eastern Washington landscape as I wrote this poem.

“Sermon” first appeared in I-70 Review.

“Inland Beach” first appeared in Menacing Hedge.

“Hanford Site, 1958” first appeared in The Smoking Poet. I used to drive by the Hanford Site on my way from Eastern Washington to western Washington and back again. The landscape in that area is already strange, and the story of the Hanford Site makes the area feel even stranger. Its silence and stillness felt eerie to me, as did the sense I had that the world was not prepared for what Hanford would become. The land was not prepared. The air and water were not prepared. The vegetation and wildlife were not prepared. And the people who lived in the area before the site was built were certainly not prepared.

Even those who moved to Richland, Washington, to work at the site were not prepared for what their hands and minds were shaping out in the desert. For this poem, I went back in time and tried to enter the hearts of Hanford’s nuclear pioneers. The poem is based on a secret report from 1958 that was unclassified in 1989.

“No Sea Here” first appeared in Canopic Jar.

No Sea Here is forthcoming from Moon in the Rye Press.