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Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Mountain

There’s a mirage along the far edge of the playa, and I’m slowly walking
towards it. I measure distance in time here: the weeks since I started,
how many more weeks to travel, as the skin of the alkali basin crackles
under my feet. The moon sets, and the air drops its furious heat into a
thermal sinkhole. Now I can see it, the tilted uplift lined dark on dark
by the absence of stars; the mountain still weeks away, still months tall.

4 comments:

Dale said...

This is wonderful. I keep trying and failing to scan your poems: there are metrical patterns in them, I can feel them, but I can never quite get a handle on them. They remind me of the tremendous long lines, "fourteeners," that Blake uses in the prophetic books, but I have a notion that they're actually four-beat lines, in their secret hearts at home.

Lori Witzel said...

When I write, I'm reading aloud; when a poem feels ready, I read it out loud again to check the rhythms, the consonance and assonance. Maybe I should make and post an audio file of me reading it? I suspect my adopted drawl comes into play as well. :-)

Dale said...

Oh yes, yes you should!

Lori Witzel said...

Okay, let's try this.
https://soundcloud.com/lori-witzel/mountain-audio-062515