Before words, mathematics nested in the Kananaskis
Valley, calculations of upsweep and plain an ache
in the bones of crow and Cooper’s hawk. Hard
science lay fossilled in the scree: evolution,
cosine, fault. We camp by a river
full of fish. It’s fall.
South, at Frank, the old town lies
in the cold arms of an equation. Mass,
velocity, a mountain broken by its weight. Path
of a projectile in the sway of gravity, Pythagorean music
as the rock came down. Those who remained built again,
just west, a place that rests like a miner on one knee
staring at the stripped logic of the northern slope
as engines throttle down and the sun, a plumb
bob, drops behind the seismic ridge.
Above our tent, leaves rattle dry
as fractals in the chill. His back
a warm and perfect arch.
Earlier, a young grizzly, collared,
tracked by men with dogs, humped
through campground cul-de-sacs, caught
in a tin net of dumpsters, shithouses, the racket
of trailers, wanting out to quick water and its autumn blooms
of cutthroat trout, the western crook of the valley where the berries
are good, too hungry yet for the high country, stumped by what’s
bred in. Perhaps the first season alone. Yes, we wanted him
gone. Or at least far enough up on the rise, approximately
postcard size, a view: Distant Landscape with Bear.
Then to sleep, bodies sweet in careless symmetry
along the curve, congruent, unconcerned
by the prospect of an elemental grunt,
the indifferent variable rumbling in
in casually cancel us out.
(Source: Wikipedia)
• Poetry • Karen Solie • link •
