Edges by Taylor Graham

Her sister has been looking in the places

Ashley used to go – back edge of the park, a little

bridge over reeds and a sometimes trickle of stream,

up a path that climbs bare hills to an oak knoll –

sisters can tell each other secrets

they wouldn’t dare at home.

That was years ago.

The walls of Ashley’s room are bare

but for a poster of a place called Saint-

Annabos across the ocean,

solitary path through leafless woods.

Her sister climbs the hill above the park,

closes her eyes to see Ashley walking that lonely

narrow path. Autumn light turns white-bark birch

trees ghostly-glowing on forest edges against

October’s deep blue gloom of October, spirits

of the missing whispering their secrets.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Her latest book is What the Wind Says (Lummox Press, 2013), poems about living and working with her canine search partners over the past 40 years.