Nicole Bethune Winters
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Valley of the Moon
there are some places that invite you to pour
yourself into them all sharp rock
and sand and cactus needles glittered
with drops of nectar where horses
are lean and wild and roam the way
they’re meant to whinnying blends
with wind and there’s a toughness
to everything the air tastes like
determination behind the hard
is sweetness the soft flesh of fruit
under a rind mica shining
in the black scales the lizard
sheds after basking at noon
the heat is a second-skin the sweat
turns to clay smeared by fingers
shaped by calluses the desert remembers
that you are 60% water and it will
suck every last drop
dry.
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When the Whitewater Thickens
between waves woven
so tight they bury the
wreckage,
trust the current to breathe
you to the surface
& catch the breath in the split
second between breaks
before
brine heaves
let the salt sting,
a sky so swollen
asphyxiates, let the wind
out of your lungs
let it wail,
hammer against the bluffs,
the ocean has never been afraid
to rage.
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Rose Colored Glasses
I thought I was lucky
impervious but salt eats
away at everything eventually and
the sandstone bluffs collapse and
twenty-nine is a landslide after heavy
rain
a total loss the cliff
can’t rebuild but it can erode
into something
new like the sand
I am breaking
away from the rock
I was cut from
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another thrifted thing
the lamp is my new favorite
it’s brass
and the whole thing gets hot when it’s been on awhile
and the lights bend and move
and it’s perfect next to the pull out bed by the fireplace
and it reminds me of the ones
in my grandparents’ house in hendersonville
where squirrels come to the porch for walnuts
where sometimes, reading in the green chair,
you can see a black bear roaming
where my sister and I used to sprint
without abandon down the golf course hill
in our swim suits while the sprinklers ran
back when catching fireflies in jars
and looking for frogs with flashlights after dark
was enough
I found one that still had a tail, once
not a tadpole, but not fully a frog
caught between one thing
and the other.