Dusky Grouse

The day my mother forgets her name
grouse beat a hundred different names for love
into my chest as they spill down the mountain 
like rocks under my feet, 
and I remember that before I was a girl 
I was a shadow too, holding in fir stands, 
afraid of what might come next.

Swallows

Just before the storm moves in, violet-green 
swallows fly overhead. 
I thought they were mayflies,
like what trout eyes see, looking up 
from a plunge pool.
Like a hermit thrush being my mother’s voice 
before dawn. 
With nothing to measure against,
how do you size something up.
This is chasing a horizon.
This is looking valley to valley from a ridgeline 
saying, it’s not all that far. 
Saying, sure, we can get there by dark.

Erin Block lives in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and works for the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. Her writing has been published in CutBank Literary Journal, River Teeth, Guernica, and Gray's Sporting Journal, among others. She is the author of the poetry collection, How You Walk Alone in the Dark (Middle Creek Publishing).

Published April 15 2024