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Three Poems from Time Life’s North American Wilderness Series

1/ The Indomitable Peninsula

Taken by astronauts with startling  f  o  rce
 
 
 So the string-straight lines  and calculated curves
 
 So the mirrors of rivers,
 
 The vast emptiness       of         the earth
 
 
 
 
 

Above the line
______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

                                                                             Below
 
 
 

Empty

 parallels without rain
 
 
 
A moon landscape  of gigantic            invisible           bones
 
 
 
 
 
 

One night I camped in a grove of cardon
 
 
 

I could hear     the coyotes   somewhere       singing
 
 
 
 you and the light
 
 
                                                The  rose  moon
 
 
                             the giant  dark

 
 
 
 
 
Before this
 
 
                                   between the cliffs and the shoreline

 
 
 
 

there must once have been birds

 

2/The Icy Road to Olympus

Honest                l                                    y
 
                                        This is             Destruction
 
                 Out in the vague breeze
 
 

which drops down dizzyingly into the darkness at our feet
 
 
            it was from some-

              where out
 
 
                  here,

 
 

that
 
            h         e
 
                     Caught sight
 
 
                                  of the mountain
 
bright blue
 
 
                        and                  spread                    out
 
 
 
on Panic Peak.

 
 

3/A Land Defined by the Sea

 

       By moonlight the waves broke
 
 
               and sometimes I saw the    faint lights
 
 
    We rumbled        by
 
 
that old road
 
This book
 
 
The country        where       i      ve            l       i       ve       d
 
 
 
 
the Sequoia Sempervirens  where the children have been reaching
 
 
 
Listen.
 
 
 

                There are still places where you can
 
200 foot high dunes
 
                 here and there  engulfing
 
                              the lonely
 
                         line             and sky

 
 
the border  enclosed within sight
 
 
of the                          mountain            s
 
                                    that rise
 
 
along the    earth
 
 
and                         the                       bracket.           of the              water:
 
 
 
 
The west
 
an assemblage                  of               peaks,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Olympic Peninsula           looped  by a highway,
 
 
 
      A ribbon
 
 
                       the         Ocean
 
 
 

                    a tiny tangle of time
 
 
 
 
                                     I was
 
                                                                   the        Salmon feasting ,
 
 
 
Invader                and wild             tide
 
 
 
What keeps so much                    wild                      is          the wilderness
 
 
                                                                                                                   around the perimeter
 
              Sky
 
 
                                  Horse
 
 
                          The bulk        of the peninsula
 
 
 
 
 
                Green
 
 

                                               increasingly

 
 
                                  cut over

 
 
 
 
 
 

You cannot eat your wilderness
 
 
    There is no way to       headquarter       a               river
 
 
 
 
      West across The Great Bend
 
              The       Blackberry               fallen           from nearby

 

The beach             at low tide
 
                                                     the water
 
                                     the          voracious         well     below the              road
 
                                                           that winds
 
                                                  around houses
 
                                                like ours
 
                                             lined with
 
                                                     trees
 
 
 

Quiet September
 
in the mornings
 
when it burns
 
 
 
just once,

at dusk,

 

we saw above the still surface.

 
 
 

Balmy or starry
 
 
Or

 
 

Agonizingly         bright

 

 

These three poems are the first in a series of experimental erasures of Time Life’s North American Wilderness Series. They, I hope, interrogate the books’ previously colonizing language and relay my own anxieties concerning major climate events.

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Ally Young

Ally Young is a poet and visual artist. She has an MFA from Syracuse University and has been published in The Columbia Poetry Review, The Bennington Review, Borderlands, The Brooklyn Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. Her chapbook The West and Other Mistakes was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2016. She teaches writing at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, New Jersey, and can be can be found online at  allyhyoung.com.