Divines

Kate Oden

Snow storm on the drive back, every flake some person I’ve passed before, divining no. Crows exclaim a tension wire, tying will to the weather. The wanting plies my muscles, my mouth as the storm sexes over the mountains. Just think when we’re together and all the apices align. We’re everesting then. Four years I line up my days in faulty pattern, your row of teeth even but for the corner, a pike, its geology with the whites of your eyes. I sneak past the deer of ourselves with us, scratching what would be my beard. The revelatory sheen I see on everything, something pinnacle just birthed. The twisted crux of the long match blackened, the practice: It’s all right to be alive; you don’t need anyone’s permission to be lucky. Some logs lie in molecular array east-west, the way I elect to you in a preglacial river. I take a map and crease it, show my crow. Here, I say, this is what they mean. The trees stand taller under the chore snow. Naked in the eyes. Saying yes.

About the poet

Kate Oden is a German translator living in New Hampshire. Her poetry has recently been published in Olney, Postscript Magazine, and MudRoom. Find her on Twitter @OdenKate or at her personal website, www.odenzine.com.