One March Animal's Desire

Warm days, we punch the snow with our footsteps,
leaving the nights' cool mercury to harden a crust.
Better to travel early, before the sun sends down
the weight of its heat. If we were otters—so light and slick—
surface wouldn't matter. We'd slide, equally happy, over
white wallow, ice or berm.

Slung so low, we would not long for a pelvic vault,
conceive ourselves the surrogates of a god.
Heads up, one arm wrapped around heaven,
the other aping the ground, we're tread-fools
of evolution. It's not that great, this awkward posture
that lumbers, drills and pocks. Texture,

some claim, but I'd as soon leave a glaze
or gentle indentation. I want to pass through smoothly,
no belt at the hip, no buckle. One tawny hair
in my wake where my belly runnels the snow,
or a slender whisker dropped in woods
as I make my way to the river.

Heracleum Lanatum (Cow Parsnip)

The flowers seem whiter this summer,
more delicate than I remember:
drops of ethereal blood,
the umbels an onionskin tracing
set down with a fine-tipped pen.

What else might I miss in this life—
how many days have I not seen the sky,
soft rags of clouds shining up the blue,
their shadows tumbling casually
over the mountains, while disillusion

like a dark flame burned
my mind's petty length.
I'm tired of human clamor,
smudge and clutter of the world.
Who wants to go on
governed by the same rude horns,
the demagogues, the rabble?

Let the culture fall to its own cravings;
I'm taking up with things divine:
leaf-filter, sheath and fiber,
stalks so tall they often lean
but determine to grow taller,
that ask for only the rain's thin coins,
the soil's nutrient and a decent light.

Ars Poetica

Nothing can be said
that is intended.

You cannot grow melons
but you learn that swamp grass
is of equal value.

If you should exact
the sound of a dove
you are perhaps unfortunate.
The coo must become
something slightly
undefined and private.

Deference to the self
is the only way to patience.
Is the slug unhappy
because he has no followers?

If you believed once in water
(whether oceans or tears)
you will someday uncover salt.
You will learn how it is mined,
begin a study of structure.

Curiously, you'll find the tongue
reluctant to accept a formal logic.

What you tend, after all,
is invariably simple:
a leaf, a blade, a stone,
the vowels long and pure,
rich and lovely.

Anne Coray's debut book of poems, Bone Strings, was published by Scarlet Tanger Books.  She lives at her birthplace on remote Qizhjeh Vcna (Lake Clark) in southwest Alaska. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Poetry, Seneca Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and Rattapallax, among others. She has been a finalist with Carnegie-Mellon, Water Press & Media, Bright Hill Press, as well as for the Frances Locke Memorial Award and Rita Dove Poetry Award. For several years she worked for the Bilingual Program in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley north of Anchorage. She lives with hler husband, Steve, and her dog, Zipper.

View more poetry books at www. ScarletTanager.com

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