The Cold Side of Window by Taylor Graham

Rain smears the glass but she won’t 

come in. Her place is walking in weather, 

looking into distances no one else can see.

Her husband has not come home. 

Wandering, they say, from canyon to mesa 

in the province of Lost. This is no 

romance, where he’ll suddenly fling open 

the door and recant every absence.

They found his pack, discarded on sand 

“neatened” – what a strange word, 

meant to calm her – night and day by wind 

that scrubs away footprints. In that cold,

high desert, he could slip into the balm 

of sleep without a waking. She wills him 

to count the nights by stars and angels 

as if they could map his way back home.

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.

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.

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.