From "The Mountains Overhead"
1.
I sang: Tell me of the heart which exists
in which to continue is not
to confine
2.
Then dreamed I sang so loudly, I woke
myself singing
The cygnets' feet were lost in snow
The cygnets were lovely because footless
3.
Our augurs read their veils
What's sensible isn't seizeable, you said, waking
5.
You may only sing to dedicate a song
6.
You may hang your dresses on the back-
yard's line and you may rest here
You may work in a mine where you see yourself in
the rock and every day remove a piece
as large as your body
8.
To bring you to this:
We row out now over the lake where stars are
these muscles sobbing makes
Slashed across nightsky like bones
in owl droppings
9.
Star exhaust
Have fun, we said for goodbye
11.
Literally: to found meaning
to founder
Every pause, a cause
Every bow, a vow
At each footfall, landfall
16.
I sang: You would love it here, because I'm here
You sang: My cheek is softer where it touched your neck
I sang: I will hold you like it is enough
for a singer to hold a single word
You sang: Don't you always hold the door an extra second,
hoping?
Did you say something?
18.
I walked home—you can see it in my eyes
23.
When the lake froze, I crossed it
To a shore closest in the coldest
24.
Can't say to land: think of me
Or: you held me in place, in places
30.
Singing: And here you are coming toward me
Everything nearing, blooms
Water cold enough to cut
I could go on
31.
As though the end of harvest were not
farthest from harvest
As though reunion were not so close to ruin
36.
Dawn in the clouds like gold in a tooth
40.
Then a man we saw at the dance club dressed all
in white and carrying an orange
42.
I could see by your look
43.
I wanted a gentle way of waking you, so I let
So I let a tissue
sift to your face…
46.
Be how you were, be how you were
I mean more
50.
Or needing to break one's mast on the bridge or
go back to the burning dock
The mast changed to a gnarled desert tree
Sail lifted to a gull
53.
Afternoons, we watched the benign gags
of silent films…
54.
I drew your picture by holding
my brush over a shaking tray
58.
If the road is shaped like an S,
you know there were mountains
61.
And there is a tribe that carries water for months
in their cheeks, their cheeks
hanging to their bellies and they never swallow
63.
Recall: I bent my brow
to the back's small
69.
Walking, so aware we were touching
Thistle
Granitescape
To leave being to meet
71.
The creek bed frosted like it isn't dry
The pump in the lawn, a lean dancer
Glove in the road,
sunning lizard
Day diving at me like the winking of a smoke detector's light
Once a minute
I remember love
75.
Sang: Tell me a secret I don't know I have
76.
So I spend a week here, have been carrying
a Thing so precious any touch dissolves it, but to prove
its worth, meaning, destroy it, now, I need
to go on, so I
hold it against you
78.
We may rest here
81.
…Be how you were, be how you were
82.
Then cut me so I unfold like the sky between
leaves into a string of paper dolls either
holding hands
88.
The dog has worn a circle around its post bare, chain
a clock hand
It is not our dog, we release it
91.
Dandelions miners' headlamps
92.
I sang: What is love to a fault?
95.
Then second: can the metal melt?
100.
Snow coming now like tissue after tissue from a box
102.
The plane never lands
104.
Or not draw a small V as though a gull seen
from a distance or a migration
of geese every time
through the day I think of you every
minute
108.
Sang: Outlast this song
Zach Savich's first book, Full Catastrophe Living, won the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize and received a New American Poet honor from the Poetry Society of America. His second book, Annulments, won the most recent Colorado Prize for Poetry and will be published by the Center for Literary Publishing in November of 2010. His poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in many journals, including Boston Review, Kenyon Review, A Public Space, Denver Quarterly, and Pleiades. A recipient of a BA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Savich has lived and taught in Italy, France, New Zealand, and around the US. He currently teaches and studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he helps organize the jubilat/Jones Reading Series.
