After Emma Hauck’s letters



If I thread the canyon, crease

where the paper folds

in an envelope, I could make it out

to you. Clouds

like bad, transversal lines

touch the implacable

mountain face, the mountain

itself, repetitions of the same

dug into strata,

faces worn by the weathering

breath, quartz, rivulets yet

wet ink, over and over. The snow

of the path down the vein

of a road, perhaps shard of a D

flake of a flake, vanishing in

the quiet tongue, an O to admit

you, to mouth a sea of letters

to me. The stone ranges

echo, the waves of whatever

remains to be written: You will

pass; I will pass the canyon

to the radix: the mountains will

stay, the waves will roll. Write again, write

again, please.