Talus Slope Poem by George Witte

Buckled up by continental
Grind so slow and powerful it
Fused frail-boned fossils of an age
Long dead into an iron spine,
The ridge juts black against the rain,
Holding nothing back.Striations
In the stone mark a glacier's till
Of retreat; the thick cold tongue stripped
Topsoil neat like skin, exposing
Sheer cliffs.
This winter, as always,
Rain and snow slip like simple words
Into the cracks of rhetoric
And swell a little.Ice crystals
Sprout perpendicular to ground,
Infinite delicate chisels
Chip the cliff face out until it
Collapses into stone strewn clean
Down-mountain like a river bed
Gone arid.
But tilt a boulder
On the slope, bend close: a single
Crystal hardens like a bud dew-
Wet with origins, hieroglyph
Of a secret life.At dawn or
After rain, or beneath calm drifts
Of snow, the ridge is blossoming
Within itself, its shales peel off
Like petals to reveal the peak
Of rock, the heart learning to speak.


From The Apparitioners (Three Rail Press,2004)