Poetry Pick

ATONEMENT by Rocco de Giacomo

The mountains vanish as you approach; hide their faces in a closet of needles and mist. The radio, the tap of the wipers fade into the shuffle of stones, and then the eclipse of your breath. Only the scratch of a coyote's claws as it stalks along the water's edge. The quiet along the roadside is as if you've walked in on something; the eye of old grief, an exchange of trespasses. Mist hangs like a reckoning over the silver water, and the river, in a gesture gone unnoticed until now, confesses the drowned ruin of trees to the mountains and forests above. From Leaning Into the Mountain (fooliar press, 2006)

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