White-Out, Pojoaque River

Photograph by Oliver Gagliani

White–out, Pojoaque River


Nathaniel Tarn

for Keith Wilson

Eye–socket muscles clench around snow–glare
like two fists. He sees winter only in this world:
everywhere else is summer. Dogs tame
to gentleness in the yards he passes; only a horse,
taciturn all year, chooses to neigh now.
His Samoyed, white against white, off to a war,
scats up black pads like signals. Explosion
of magpies—sky trailing from low tails,
ink and frost featherworks. In these distances,
both east and west, the mountain tables sit
powdered with snow as if the gods had flown
to scatter glacial pollen on their thrones.
He walks a colorless music, ivory and black
coding the universe alone (where, finally,
slight spider death had crawled on poison,
now sorrowed for, and shrunk to her last web).
At the impassable water, where the walk ends,
he hears potential company. No: now it’s river
plays her bass counterpoint against a leaf
held to its branch. Treble is higher up, against
a stone. At last, the leaf dislodged moves on
downstream. Sound stops—breaking a silence.


Recollections of Being
Nathaniel Tarn