Found

Half buried in gravel and winter on

a dawn-damp Colorado trail,

the elk antler trembled as I dug it out.

It woke in my hand like a dowser’s wand—

and has kept now twenty years

a ceaseless peace on my bookshelf,

being in this room the one power

that is wordless.

It traces a memory of rivers,

branching as if the path it has traveled,

dead end after dead end,

is the only way into the high places.

Chill to the touch, smelling of an other

earth both vanished and wholly present;

yellowish and streaked white, ribbed

with shadow like old snow, it’s a rough

mirror of the night-tined candelabra

whose blown fire has led me to see in the dark.

Who can say it is not alive, this knowledge and map

of the country of going away?

What song

might burn where my own bones fork

in the sculpting darkness beyond all reason?

where the beast rages on the steep rock,

in ice-ridden, star-barbed, always

waking season?