Three Poems by Taylor Graham

 

How They Got Where They're Going

Early memories jammed into 

projects, poolrooms, suburban split-

levels -- what outlaw habits, or one

bad choice, brought them to this place?

Their present bonds are of the psyche

as much as prison bars.

But you come here voluntarily, once

a week, to give theme men a voice,

unchain their thoughts through 

metaphor.  You bring the generosity

of words. Poetry. Your reward:

to see metamorphosis in their eyes.

A Scotty-Dream

Beam me up

to a space I've never seen

and never heard of,

not a tourist attraction nor at war;

some place that's suffered

no human contact

since pre-Industrial Revolution;

out of human time.

I'd wander among plants and animals

left to themselves,

who won't regard me as an enemy;

some place I can't identify

by name or position

on a geo-political map

and -- waking --

can't return to again,

to see how we've changed it

already

in my lifetime.

Letter to You in the Other Seat

Our trip yesterday up the mountain --

you should have been driving, corner of one

eye on the road while you appraised ridges

and canyons -- miles of skeleton pine and cedar.

You'd tell me about the forest coming back

after fires you fought when you were younger,

when you could still pass the step-test.

You'd tell me how this fire was hotter, more

unpredictable, born of climate change.

You'd point to small green coming back --

deer brush, bear clover.  But you're far away

in the passenger seat, while I drive

and tell you what the landscape looks like now;

if you could remember how it used to be --

hardpan forest roads we'd drive, wondering

where they went; their names on wooden signs

burned away now like your eyesight

and your memory.  I'd wait for you to tell me

the forest will come back.  And I'd believe it, if you'd come back too.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler and served as El Dorado County's inaugural Poet Laureate.  She's included in California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present; California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, and elsewhere.  Her latest collection is Windows of Time and Place (Cold River Press, 2019).