SUMMER POETRY SPECIAL

★ ★ ★ ★

MIRIAM SAGAN

Suite from Lama Mountain

You show me Scorpius
with its fiery stinging tail
rising by the moon
beneath Jupiter
and the summer triangle
and the dipper.
Across the field
the campers chorus hallelujah
and two kids run off like mad
into the darkness.
If it weren’t for you
I wouldn’t know the names of the stars;
If it weren’t for me
you wouldn’t know the story
of the shepherd and the waving princess:
stars
separated by the Milky Way
for all but one night a year.
For us to meet
you just have to take
522 north
and I’ll be home
by Sunday,
but if we weren’t
apart
I wouldn’t know
Lama Mountain.

***

You thought the ripples
of ink
on wet paper
printed rivers and mountains,
a one-time
repetition
of the shape of things,
until
the burnt forest
started burning
fueled by the next growth
of oak scrub
and smoke
drifted
through the studio
uncurling
like the reverie
at the tip
of a cigarette,
and what we loved was fuel
for burning
Lama Mountain.

***

How many years ago
did it burn
the west facing slope?
I admired it for days,
the shape, the height,
before truly realizing
the forest’s carnage.
Things appeared out of
a quality of emptiness,
like the line of campers
waving homemade American flags,
or the three large golden brown dogs
who appeared out of the afternoon calm
to pee on our kitchen floor.
Mother, hornet, euphoria, night terror:
I asked for
none of this.
And yet,
when we went to visit
the sienna-colored horses
the campers
were learning
to butcher a goat
and two little boys
followed us, displaying
the goat’s eyeball
miraculous if disembodied.
The sweetest brown dog
was a stray
now adopted
by two of the girls,
proudly wearing a bandana
as a collar of belonging.
What is home?
you might keep
on asking
that question.
We felt we had to hide
the photographs
of us
naked
using layers of ink
or embroidery.

Lama Mountain
protects those
who reveal themselves
while staying hidden
which is also
the nature
of all mountains.