Two Poems by Taylor Graham

Casting Shadows

            High school girl missing….

 

Not far from town, that peaceful forest road

edged by black oak, pine, and cedar;

my dogs casting for scents on a fresh breeze;

scanning deer-prints in the dust of early June;

as if there were no other characters

in the cast of that quiet scene, mountains

mined long ago for their gold; left to heal

themselves. And yet, unease

            as if I sensed, on the ridge above,

her shadow behind a log, bones

not yet covered with leaf- and needle-fall.

Earthworms leaving castings in soil.

The spell that ghosts cast.

 

 

Witnesses

 

On everyday mornings, marvels. Magic,

 

to survive the so-close crash at our very gate –

no one we knew, but still we keep a photo

of the wreck. Each witness carries a long wake

 

as the jaws of life shear away everything

we counted on. Security of a steel box, safe cage

of ribs to hold heart and breath. Gems

of windshield glass on the shoulder, shaken

 

like salt into the raw of dreams. Years after

disaster, people still dress for work, and pray

for peace, another day. And mourning doves rise

from the witness field. This magic, to be alive.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in El Dorado County. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, and Southern Humanities Review. Her latest book is What the Wind Says (Lummox Press, 2013), about living, training and searching with her canine partners.