I.
Hiking Atalaya Peak,
pressure in my heart cavity.
An oxygen team sucking its way
through trusses of tissues, churning
coagulated blood, pumping
a steadying baton to dizzy cells
of my brain.
Stumpy piñon pine
and Rocky Mountain juniper
cascade aside their taller compadres,
Ponderosas. White and
Douglas fir succeed
as I mount the stony column
of Atalaya’s spine.
Creeping pink adobe
houses and an orange-capped
fellow traveler are closing ranks.
II.
Brittle ochre stalks—
burned out desert candles
of summer mullein—
march across the summit,
beacons to past days
spent riding open fields
with cowgirl fantasies,
watching my fathers’ corona-clad
body astride his palomino steed
disappearing
through hazy aspen thicket
on a morning ride.
His burning figure
forever receding.
The thick walls of his cavernous
heart, unable to surmount
thin air, unknown pressures.
III.
I did not know then
the aspen are one colony
joined in rooted twistings
beneath our trampling steps.
I did not know mullein
took advantage of
disturbances, finding
opportunity in forest clearances,
standing as yellow sentries
in fields of forgetting.
—
Suzanne Edison’s book, Since the House Is Burning, by MoonPath Press was published in 2022. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Her poetry can be found in The Missouri Review, SWWIM, Solstice Literary Magazine, RockPaperPoem, Whale Road Review, Lily Poetry Review, JAMA, and elsewhere. She teaches expressive writing to caregivers through UCSF Wellness Center for Youth with Chronic Conditions and lives in Seattle.
