or clatter them into the sink, I think
of John Muir, suddenly blind
by an awl snapped upward,
piercing his eye. What remained?
A hunger for holiness, like when I realize
everything outside was made
by someone’s hands—even
the rats, boundless and loud,
fat on trash. All of it, I fold
into the suitcase of myself.
I hike out to find wild, knees crackling
like cantillations under prayer.
In the woods, I watch rock walls
turn in on themselves, squint
to make edges against sky—
I tend not to trust my eyes. Years ago,
a girl died in a nearby pond. I’m told
she filled her pockets with rocks.
I forget, sometimes, that I was there
that night walking—saw a figure
by the edge, palm pale on the water.
I could barely see. I know
I saw her. I wish I could tell
what’s about to be gone—that the trees
the next day would be strung
with yellow tape, branches bucking
under a helicopter’s breath.
Rachel M. Dillon is a poet, teacher, and book reviewer from Boston. She holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University and an MAT from Brandeis University. She is currently the email marketing manager for The Adroit Journal and a poetry reader for the Los Angeles Review. This fall, she will be living and writing in Italy as a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow. Her poetry and book reviews appear or are forthcoming in Publishers Weekly, Broadsided Press, The Other Cape, and elsewhere.
