Regeneration

the naked hillside. Scattered blackened limbs lay strewn

among the seeds & soot of heat-popped conifers—the brush

cleared & soil cleansed for new life. Now, mountain laurels

hang in their pink & white tufts like clouds between green

rocks & cliffs that mimic the memory of water in their color,

their shape, their texture, their scent. You carry our daughter

heavy on your back as I had once carried her, straining, inside

my swollen body—both of us dimly aware that we would only

briefly touch the weight of her life & accepting the burden.

As I lead the dog off the trail for a moment, she calls

out for me, desperate, reaching down from above & between

the cool shadows of young trees, crying out against the

unnamed threat. I try to imagine the other side of brutality—

what it must have felt like to abandon a child. Back at camp,

each slice of the pocket hatchet peels away a slender piece of kindling

for the fire we feed, contained here between us, pouring

smoke into our hair & eyes that will cling to us for days. If I could

reach through time & ash to touch my great-grandmother

(whose name I never learned) back when she was still a young

woman about to walk out on her two small daughters, & if

we could lift up our shirts to show her where her lasting force

has carved into us like the red river that cut this mountain out—

that even as new forests thicken, blaze, grow again, we’ve carried

the shape of her pain inside us—would she let us hold her

long enough to steady her at the hinge? Would we be able

to swaddle her in mud & moss & leaves, cradle her here

under the lip of this cave, breathe in the ancient damp & whisper

that whatever it is, we will be okay. Let her thrash & rage &

claw against our bodies, split our skins & still know: we will stay.

—Sarah Yost