Red Door 33

POETRY
Idaho Lake Fragments
1.
Swallow’s nest wedged in the hawthorn, woven with pine needles—
lodgepole, white, ponderosa—and thickened earth. You are not a cradle
or a bedroom but like a bedroom cradle you shelter, rock. Bring me the
protection of clay.
2.
Eagle, wings ruffling the rain drenched air. Bald head a splash of light
above Spring Lake. You are not a mood, but like a mood you darken and
brighten and fade. There, then gone. There. Gone over the tree-lined hills.
Acquaint me with transience.
3.
Snag. Are those ponderosa limbs twisting from your torso? The deep
green has moved into the crevices of your puzzled bark. Your gray head
snapped and rutted. You are not an aging woman but like some ancient
grandmother you are striking, stricken, snagged. Standing, still. Offer your
branched wisdom.
4.
Campfire: cracked red mudrocks cradle your imperfect head. Charred
logs crisscross old coals. Flames gone days, or maybe weeks. You are not
her body, but like my mother whose limbs I held as she crossed over, your
flame still is in its vanishing. Kindle me.
5.
Cattails—carnival corndogs, fairgoers crowding the shoreline. Swamped
family, springtime pelts warming your oblong heads as you age into summer.
You are not wands or wizards but like a wizard wand you can bend
perception—be gentle with your whispering change.
DJ Lee is a writer, scholar, artist, and regents professor of English at
Washington State University. She has published over forty essays and
prose poems, the memoir Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots
(Oregon State 2020), and eight scholarly books, including The Land
Speaks (Oxford 2017).
**Previously published in The Bayan Review, Issue 15, Summer ´23
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