Pam Uschuk: Like Obsidian’s Idea of Itself | Operation Uplift During the Pandemic

for Luis Alberto Urrea

.

Beside an unnamed stream that rushes across slate

like obsidian’s idea of itself, I count,

in each drenched cleft of broken rock, columbine,

forget-me-nots, shooting stars,

purple, yellow, white and

whale-eyed as imagination running away with sky.  

At 10,000 feet I huff upslope 

beyond oxygen, carrying in my daypack

the stories of friends, trail food

for loneliness.  A camp robber screeches

from fir to Douglas fir.  A second month

we have been confined while COVID-19 rips

through lung after lung, a death count

raging higher than we have syllables to speak.  

Each day my friend asks us to share

evidence of grace, photo trails of kids laughing, 

prayer flags strung with petals, 

sequin’s strum along hummingbird wings, 

the pulsing conversation of trees.  

For grace, we’ve ceased watching 

the president and his minions walk the plank of greed.

I click on my friend’s latest shot

of water’s multiple depths at high altitude,

and I leap to hike with him uplifted

with all the beloveds I can no longer see.

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Pam Uschuk’s books include Blood Flower (Wings Press 2015). She lives in Tucson, Arizona.