The hand is the beginning as rowan blossoms are also called
spikes. The buffalo in my home state are free range
and dying. Hunting permits are hard to get but
not impossible & blackbirds love the red of ago.
Nothing stays. The wildfires will take
every mountain & ash will fall like white petals.
When all this began you were dust &
the difference between dust and ash is heat.
If you trust me enough, take my hand
as blackbirds take the rowan with them
to other mountains. From my mountain I could not see
the buffalo but knew which exit to take if I wanted
to capture one with my camera. I have never
seen one out of captivity. I have never
tucked a rowan under my tongue
but I want, more than anything. If you trust me,
leave red seed in your palm to offer black wings &
when the fires come, remember
no mountain has ever belonged to you.
Nightfall unsettles echoes from the mountain's
emerald knees _ The pang of distant starlight
falls mother-of-pearl upon dead pine needles _
The forest has a wound and the wound cannot heal
while wind is scored across a frozen lakeskin _
cattails felled by winter’s beak _
Sometimes that means death and sometimes it doesn’t _
Sometimes the yarrow lies bloodshot beneath the snow
and warms its hands against buried fireweed _
waiting for the water to ripen to melt _
This waiting is allowed to be a haven _ the wound is allowed _
Light scuffs the ice like pine needles and the ice _
just slightly _ gives way _ The mountain kneels to touch its forehead
downlake _ glimpsing through green water _ living fish _
Wheatfields dappled red offer vessels in the form of scythes—
waxing moon bowl to a night sky cloud cover obscured.
A doe’s ear oars across
a canyon’s lip.
In every valley runs two rivers, blood and
light in embryo under an opaline canopy.
None of this is silent to a heart that waits to hear.
Water strums moonlight as it bleeds down sandstone sheer.
Wheat sways and curls its hand around sky’s dark palm.
The cost to listen is nothing. A little blood and light.
Offer your knees to the landscape
the canyon of your finger to the doe’s tufted ear.
If the scythe is in your hands
set it down and wait.
Pines coo in obedience
to the sun’s mane & flees prepare
to herd like cattle across the hounds’ open plains &
the harbor wrings water from its damp cloth upon its distended shore
& the sky pinkens and peels as a child’s skin in winter & every body
yawns at once.
Sticking my finger into each mouth i stroke the roofs
until i am satisfied
with the canyons & the mouth’s water
which flows to guard from dry death.
i cattle & am open as a horseshoe.
The body's ability to keep itself from dehydration. We all know water
until we don’t—until it wheels like a mare toward the child’s head.
When flashfloods rip sandstone skin from canyon walls &
winter warbles against light
& flayed bodies of water say
to the flees pinken & hounds shake drool on everything & cattle trample trees
to flat tongues.
i am open as a mouth & i cry in obedience
Taylor Franson-Thiel is the author of Bone Valley Hymnal (ELJ Editions 2025). She is an editorial reader for Poetry Daily, the Assistant Poetry Editor for phoebe and the Editor-in-Chief of BRAWL.
Images from “A Face in the Crowd”, directed by Elia Kazan, 1957, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal.
