Ballast

BY Susan Tichy

“…and to know that everything around and underneath had been
from prehistoric times as unaltered as…” —Thomas Hardy

Row of boulders at the glacier’s edge
‘Darwin turns his horse inland’
as I was counting the 580th step

Red, bare, too steep for snow
the presence of, say, a cataract notwithstanding

Boot-leather, lichen, elk scat
and ‘that most heart-exciting of earthly things’
a broken lace

Kataskapos: the looker down
‘Discovered a shattered vertebra
in a small piece of chalk’

Spirit gallops into miles of space
‘We hold the reins / at the river bank’

 

Biography

SUSAN TICHY is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Gallowglass (2010) and Bone Pagoda (2007), both from Ahsahta Press. Her poems have appeared widely in the U.S. and Britain, and have been recognized by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and numerous other awards. Since 1988 she has taught in the Graduate Writing Program at George Mason University. When not teaching, she lives in a ghost town in the Colorado Rockies.

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