Hiking
By Abigail Wender
I try to understand
why countless, unnamed pollutants
poison our air; millions of dollars
were spent marketing opiates.
Get in the swing, with OxyContin . . .
The mountain path ends in rock.
Hiking, I break my walking stick.
It's replaceable. There's a silence
that's like unspoken complaints,
two minds not making amends.
At the meadow's edge, a scarlet tanager
alights on a white pine—
are there words for us, America,
high on an uppermost branch?
Copyright Credit: Abigail Wender, "Hiking" from Reliquary. Copyright © 2021 by Abigail Wender. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.
Source: Reliquary (Four Way Books, 2021)