First hike down a stumble,
new boots in bluish light.
I stand up dizzy, staring
past rippled stone to water,
through rippling water to stone,
the setting sun
angling prismatic.
Full-moon switchbacks,
purple shadow walls,
the light changes
and I start over
differently. I need the turns,
the time, the roar
of the blazing river
imprinted on my mind.
Carol L. Deering has twice received the Wyoming Arts Council Poetry Fellowship (2016, judge Rebecca Foust; 1999, judge Agha Shahid Ali). Her poems appear in online and traditional journals and anthologies, and in her first book, published fall 2018: Havoc & Solace: Poems from the Inland West (Sastrugi Press). http://www.sastrugipress.com/books/havoc-and-solace/
