May 13, 2004 Home Back Issues free e-newsletter!

Two Poems by Anna Mills   Greeting the Goddess   This was the summer for ice lakes. Since I was not in love but alone as if always, I surrendered to the sun on the water in a basin of earth beside a horizon of sharp gray peaks.   September: the laurel flamed on the shore. I knelt naked, cupped hands under the surface, saw the caddis fly track the bottom in a shell of sand. My feet dug into muddy moss, I grinned like a mother who watches her child walk, I slipped under.   The burning took me; I could not stop moving, giving thanks - waves of sun and my mouth wide in shock, hands slapping drops from my skin, arms wide against the far peaks, calling to my body and hers, Welcome!   ---------------   This Body   Today we arrived at the gold grass country, I sit in a blue bubble under wind, Watching the teeth of the ridge. I am afraid because I lack nothing.   The future surrounds me: Ten books, a peak, a surrender to burning water. This is the stone set in the ring, The sixteenth return to the lake.   I have no person to touch for heat, No name or price to my job. I want these. But, now, a mass of talus rises above me. Her name is Dana; she is red.  I have climbed her twice, Lingered ninety minutes with the map, Looked down and inhaled the glacier.   Tomorrow, I will saunter over the meadow without stopping, into the clear dark of the lake. Now, the days stretch from the zipped tent door. I gaze and gather this, my body.     Anna Mills has written poetry and creative nonfiction for Lodestar Quarterly, SoMa Literary Review, Long Story Short, Moxie Magazine, Rain and Thunder, and the anthology The Pagan's Muse from Citadel Press. She is working toward an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College.