Life Stories, & Other Possible Endings

Abstract

Life Stories, & Other Possible EndingsSpring Valley, Nevada (in the shape of a tree) Sawnie Morris (bio) The way at night as we eat and drink … next to a river cool currents of air.. slide between us…as though someone has rolled down the window in a fast moving cloud. . … across the desert .. where you are town guide of abandoned mine sites. … and trees alive from before Christ—their seedlings sprung about the time democracy started up in Greece. . … … Everyone (except women & slaves) gathered in the amphitheater .. to cast votes .. a field of single hands raised. . … …We are surprised .. to see small daubs … of forest brushed by quick painterly strokes.. … Or like animals .. you say .. a herd of zebra or gazelle clustered. . … …The lion.. no longer hungry…dozes sleepily at the edge of the lake.. … while power lines rise in pairs .. their arms crossed one over the other .. range to range .. in a procession resembling Kachinas … (the gods have assumed modern—though still electrifying—expression). . … …You press the final elements into … the tail of the car…while like a puzzle I wander—a bit of a river rain—about the edges of ground … where we’ve filled our heads with stars—such a relief!—next to the stream—where we’ve laved cold water . . … … on our freshly naked skin .. each morning after sleep… beneath the smooth and oddly human curves. . … …of a pine struck by longing … … and apparently.. .once upon a time, by lightning .. we say the little thank you prayer to montane life … . to twisted bristlecone and purple monkshood .. to yellow stream violet and the hardly startled doe we stumbled on. .. .that first morning … golden-mantled .. morning . .. the way we used to do when we were a child—the last, the very last thing [End Page 138] Sawnie Morris Sawnie Morris won the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award (2010) for a selection of five poems and was cowinner of the New Mexico Book Award (2007). Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, thedrunkenboat.com, The Journal, Women’s Review of Books, and other magazines. Her writing about poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Boston Review. She is book review and essay editor for the Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art and curator of art and activism for Amigos Bravos: Because Water Matters, a nonprofit protection and restoration organization for New Mexico’s waters. [sawnie@newmex.com] Copyright © 2014 Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc.