A Trellis In The Snow

A Trellis in the Snow

The glacial snow smudging the plate
an opaque gray.
A mercurial bend
rising too soon from the spine
of a western mountain range.
The white bones swimming there,
laminated and reinforced with x-ray eyes.
Hold them awkward as plane wings
bolted and riveted into place,
or disk harrows in some farmer's field.
It's rideable.
The pain there along the back,
turning on the cold table
for the gulp of x-ray.
And you, sitting there in the waiting room,
reading with your finger lapping at a page,
look outward from your article
to see the work
of seas and swamp vapors and dry land.
As if it was how protozoans
only hoped they would look.
Impossible to see
the cracks and fissures.
But what do we say?
We knew here in the vicinity of the upright
there would be trouble.
Old seers should have kept us on all fours.
But now my backbone imprinted on a plate
of sheet metal
to shake and tremble in the wind,
and you beside me,
reading,
holding my bones on your lap.


Diane Glancy