Umbrella
A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose


Taylor Graham

is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Her poems have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004).

Her book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), was winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.


—Back to Orsorum Contents/Issue Links—

Midden

October 31st. I dress in bones

for the girl who fled her murderer
across the ridge, delving finger by toe
down corridors of ant and gopher

and for the fisherman who cast himself
in the South Fork, to be landed
at last on a grappling hook

and for the palsied old lady
who shook herself to dead leaves
in a bramble of berries.

This last morning
of October, the sun’s eye-level,
lighting oak-leaf candles

as I descend the trail, then climb
through mountain-misery
to a clearing of spirits

gathered here at the midden stone,
folk who stood at this granite
before me,

looking out on the living
world as I do,
seeing across the canyon

as far as they could see.



 
<< Previous
Next >>