Climbing Out of the Canyon

My nose full of sweetgrass and sweat and dry heat
stomped out of pink earth and sandy snake-havens
I set down my backpack.  Never do that again.
Small trees offer shadows evergreen and deciduous
with leaves of parched paper all twisted by wind and thirst.
Wide winged black bird appears, easy and silent 
on towers of wind, leads my eyes to the clouds over 
mark-lines of time carved and curved in flat rainbows
of stone unconcerned with the transient mammal
perched for a blink beside the ledge over the river that beckons.
Yes       Maybe I’ll go down again someday.

Wren Donovan‘s poetry and prose appears or is upcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Harpy Hybrid Review, Hecate Magazine, Green Ink Poetry, Luna Luna Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also a Tarot reader and meditative dancer who tends to hide in plain sight but likes to wear things that jingle. She is fond of history books and often talks to cats. Wren studied literature, Classics, folklore, and psychology at Millsaps College, UNC-Chapel Hill,  and University of Southern Mississippi. She lives in Tennessee among  many trees and can be found on twitter @WrenDonovan.