Poetry – Issue 2 | December 2008
Two Poems by Christine Potter
Passing the Wildfire
(Montana, August 2007)
After driving past the hundred hills
of Western Pennsylvania, sky blue
and still as a dry swimming pool—
after the Great Plains in their weary
glare, our car a little sun, glinting
in motel parking lots late afternoons
and at dawn—after all that, smoke
and cold water in a stainless steel sink
at the rest stop an hour east of Missoula.
I splash my face, run wet fingers through
my hair. Breath catches in my throat
like soup, oversalted and boiled almost
to nothing. A couple on a motorcycle
masks their faces with damp towels.
It’s news on local radio, but only human
interest: stalwart joggers in the haze,
children at the park anyway, this state’s
late summer. Brown clouds like dried blood,
an in-law on the cell phone: really last week’s
heat was worse than this. Just past town,
half-smothered coals like orange stars
in black grass that just brushes the edge
of the road. Then we’re past it, and almost
all the way West. I won’t smell fire again
until tonight, when I pull today’s shirt
over my head, sitting on a cool white bed
at considerable altitude, dizzy from it
but grateful for this twilight’s clarity.
At the windows, half lost in shadow,
six-story cedars flap their shaggy branches
like slow wings getting ready to land,
calmly descending, circling into night.
About the author
Although she has homebody instincts, Christine has traveled extensively throughout the United States, the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, a little in France, and gotten hopelessly lost with her usually GPS-like husband outside of Prague in an un-airconditioned rental car on a very hot day. Christine Potter has been head moderator at The Gazebo for longer than she wants to consider; she often publishes in small magazines such as Tipton, Mimesis, and recently, Eclectica. Her first collection of poems, Zero Degrees At First Light, is available at Amazon. Christine lives in an old house on a creek at the beginning of the NYC exurbs with aforementioned husband and two fat, spoiled pussycats.
