Caldera by Taylor Graham - Your Daily Poem

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Caldera
by
Taylor Graham

Beyond the little siphon-creek

with its pond of tadpoles and swaying

grasses, where we called our dogs back

from sniffing into reeking damps,

we climbed through mesa-

country; took an unmarked washboard

road. Platitudes of all our travels:

go invisible as wind; camp on the edge

of no place with a name; pack up at dawn

and leave no trace, not even fire-pit ashes.

That night it snowed.

Hyakutake parked above us, shining

its comet headlight down from a blacktop

sky spitting flaky white.

After midnight, a ghost-girl

stumbled into my dream and slumped

so cold against the tent, I let her

have my sleeping bag. Our dogs snored

through it.

At first-light I called

them from their own night visitations.

Gear stowed in the truck, we drove

back out over washboard.

Abundant time to determine

which way next. Another of our

platitudes: take the slow route

that doesn’t show on a map; try to see

what nobody thought to mention.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Author of numerous books, her work is also included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library, 2012) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Taylor’s current project, What the Wind Says, forthcoming from Lummox Press, is a collection of dog poems about living with her canine search partners over the past 40 years. Learn more about Taylor at www.somersetsunset.net.

Wilda Morris:
The "blacktop sky" - what a fresh and wonderful image!
Posted 11/10/2013 04:33 PM

dotief@comcast.net:
Wonderful!
Posted 11/10/2013 09:08 AM

TheSilverOne:
Every line, magic. Read it several times, making new discoveries each time. Beautiful!
Posted 11/10/2013 08:19 AM

jeanie:
i love the ghost girl ... & taking the slow route. this poem is magic, yes.
Posted 11/10/2013 08:11 AM

Larry Schug:
This poem's got the magic ingredient-texture. Paying attention is so rewarding, eh?
Posted 11/10/2013 07:23 AM

fer:
I keep returning to the part about the comet -- that is so beautiful.
Posted 11/10/2013 04:52 AM

Eiken:
Beautiful work, you took me right there with you. :) Maire in Ireland.
Posted 11/10/2013 04:33 AM

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