All the while the water boils,
the snow melts,
the soul comes
home to remind you of yourself
as if to say, dear person
I am here.
All the while the folding in
like paper, like paper animals,
like folded prayers
and then the folding out:
bones breaking,
blood blueing,
all the mechanisms of the body
undoing
until inside –
mountain range, alpine meadow,
rock, wildflower,
old, unmelted snow.
And here the trail
where I am walking
between the corners of skin
and sky.
—
As her grandmother once said, Callie Plaxco flew the coop when she left South Carolina to journey west to the University of Wyoming for her MFA in Creative Writing. Still in Wyoming, Callie lives with her husband, two small boys, and two big dogs. Her chapbook Dear Person is available at Dancing Girl Press and individual poems have appeared in Carve Magazine, Tinderbox, SWWIM and Sugar House Review. She is the 2024 recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council’s Neltje Blanchan Writing Award.
