Last night, content with gin and aggregated polls, I sat
like Adam weaving garlands, still secure in Eve’s delight,
no warning voice while anchors did the math and CNN adored
a magic wall, zoomed in astounded at the chill of bitter loss.
Today, I’ve climbed above the vastness of this valley, above
the frost. I smile into the wind. Afraid to look,
I close my eyes; I see my camera’s view, the frames I’ll carry
with me, the stories I’ll recount another day. Two southern boys
appear and I am quick to judge. Why claim this space to gloat?
But they have come to mourn. A leaf flickers and falls;
I pose as if this were a day of steps and miles amassed,
this fallen day of math undone, cold calculations failed.
Aloft, the ravens daze themselves and me. My vision falters
as they disappear. What world is this where earth returns to air
and black flocks play with wind? Where trees, hard-blown and rooted
in the stone, grow cones, so lush and round? There where verdant
fir meets plum-tinged sky, my blood returns in scarlet leaves,
as if there were a plan laid out, a world of math that counts.
So what’s the math that mountains do? This one craves my touch,
crisp rock, rough rubbed against my palms, smooth to my sight. It lures
me higher, forgets the journey down. No urgency without
a clock or screen, the ballot counters fade. I’m left to learn
another math. Forget the polls and tweets, the weight of shale,
of granite, offer up a measure of our loss, our letting go.
–
Julie Pfeiffer is professor of English at Hollins University and the author of Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence (University Press of Mississippi, 2021).
