Poems by Patti Trimble
Archives: by Issue | by Author Name
Below Isberg Pass
by Patti Trimble
From Canary Summer 2013
Patti lives on the edges of two watersheds: In California near San Francisco Bay, she often walks from her house to the sludgy tidal slough known as the Petaluma River. In Sicily (where water flows mostly underground) she lives close to Fonte Aretusa, a freshwater spring bubbling up a few feet from the Mediterranean.
Each summer I imagine myself a voyager
to the unknown, my high meadow wilderness
some beloved green sea, my heart
a gyroscope that spins to the high view
where river runs to cloud.
I must go there in those brief and fragile months.
I must memorize flowers that hang from threads,
columbine, cinquefoil, or the tiniest white daisies.
But where I once thought the sky trembled
and boulder shivered for every god in need of a home,
I now believe it shakes in fear of me
and see behind me deepening trenches
across this Earth I meant to love.
© Patti Trimble