Fog. Orphaned rocks.
Cataclysmic breakage. Suppose
you’re driving through flatland,
pierced by three hulking
islands of grim basalt,
harsh as a diagnosis. And what of
the heart, wincing, convicted perhaps,
a lonely compulsion, exposed?
Moving on, into the foothills,
behold the brooding,
aeonian glacier—all gouge
and surge, as if
underground stealth sheared,
then shifted, vulnerable mass,
rehoming the stones: erratics,
we call them, earthen exiles,
stark, against the horizon until,
oh look,
a shunt of sunlight, piercing
shadows and covert
upheaval, resounding
glory remapping everything.
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Laurie Klein is the author of Where the Sky Opens (Poeima/Cascade) and an award-winning chapbook, Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. “Frost” is part of House of 49 Doors: entries in a life, Laurie Klein’s forthcoming poetry collection from The Poeima Poetry Series (Cascade, 2024). A past winner of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and a Pushcart nominee, Laurie’s work has also appeared in The Christian Century, Ascent, First Things, EcoTheo Review, Presence, Relief, Dappled Things, Saint Katherine Review, The Windhover, Ruminate, Ekstasis, and elsewhere. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and blogs monthly at lauriekleinscribe.com.
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