SUBHAGA CRYSTAL BACON

FALL/WINTER 2020 ISSUE #01 POET

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger (Methow Press, 2020) and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky (BOA Editions, 2004). A cis-gender, Queer identified woman, she lives, writes, and teaches on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains, in Twisp, Washington.

WALKING WINGLESS

Deer trails terrace hillside, a smell on the wind 

of something dead and hidden. I startle a hawk; 

unsuspecting, he flies right at me. A quick turn 

shows the delicate striped colors of his underside—

wings tiered red—each feather for just a moment 

articulate, individual as the voices of a choir, 

then gone. 

      There is no loveliness like this. 

Dante hid the sins of man in circles,

each hell more vile, more refined. Up here,

I walk its mirror, climbing higher and higher 

till the signs of man shrink to obscurity: house, 

barn, road awash in space. 

      What is our living 

or dying compared to this? The northern sky 

folds itself around what rises.

I’m walking right into it, wingless as light.