Unfinished Mountain Finished with Words

BY Susan Tichy

i
Scattered woods below forest — signed
with precise top rims on the rockfalls
edge of the up-slopes falling away

in perfectly unrepresented space, the grass
at my feet a splash of lamp-black

pencil-lines for rocks ignored by the brush
and an aspen trunk pretty much just paper
raw in a forest of ink

Three hours in and twilight stilling the path

ii

Inscribed in sky: same range, seen from a higher point

line = form, colour = light
and shadow passing precisely
though incongruently
through

clouds strike upward in front of the mountain
tossing bits of white paint out of the blue

and then, at left, a brown cloud, pencil-scribbled

The avalanche follows that unpainted curve
dead center on the dark slope

and the lines are barely under, barely there

 

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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