Rachel Cloud Adams, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Harvey Mountain, Columbia County, New York
On Harvey Mountain, far north of here,
snow is seeping into rock crevices
bordering the path, and lichen
is lining the feet of a denuded pine,
its root system upturned,
open to the air, an unbuilt
house’s foundation.
The snow foams into pools,
popping open and re-forming
as embers of sharpening sound.
What we left on the mountain
comes to me in secret,
in the chambers of a squirrel’s nest
concealed by leaves,
in liminal time between
summer and autumn, before
the cold packs itself in.
We listened to the mountain
with our teeth, with the cilia
in our noses, through the exposed
spaces between glove
and thick coat sleeve.
The mountain warbled back to us.
This fall is quiet, abstracted.
In the silence, Harvey Mountain forms
like an indigo wave in the darkness,
guards us at night.
Rachel Cloud Adams is the editor for an advocacy association and the founder/editor of the journal and small press Lines + Stars. Her poems have appeared in The North American Review, Big Muddy, Salamander, Dialogist, The Conium Review, CAROUSEL, Memoir, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of three chapbooks: What is Heard (Red Bird Press, 2013), Sleeper (Flutter Press, 2015), and Space and Road (Semiperfect Press, 2019). She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and received her MA in writing from the Johns Hopkins University.