In the Methow Valley
the chartreuse grass after snow melt is electric desire.
It never fails to catch me out.
I’m erratic. Who isn’t lurching
toward bees buzzing the blue flax

as they gather and spread the future without knowing?
I’m tranced by oil-slick-skin beetles mating
on lupines and captive
to aspen’s quaking snare. But there’s no escaping
the tally sign along the highway

of deer kills. Everything vibrates—
the wars, and the mayhem
of ravens. All echoing.
How to practice devotion—
like a wren endlessly feeding

hungry mouths—who built a nest in the depression
of a cow’s skull? I have cobbled
a life into being. One day I’ll join the dog
buried under the giant Ponderosa. That wind you’ll hear?
Me, singing from the ravenous earth.

---

Suzanne Edison’s book, Since the House Is Burning, was published by MoonPath Press in 2022. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018, and her poetry can be found in Whale Road Review, Lily Poetry Review, JAMA, MER, and elsewhere. She is the Mental Health Coordinator at the Cure JM Foundation, and teaches expressive writing to caregivers through UCSF Wellness Center for Youth with Chronic Conditions. She lives in Seattle.

---