Poetry:
Schauble, Virginia
Virginia Schauble Moving into Light Grief is a strange land, tundra sharp. For days at a time only winded stillness prevails. The heart, of a new necessity, must speak rightly to itself or wither....
...Unguarded apprentice, I guard the willow, proof of my life moving upward into light...
...Still my insides roar...
...An arctic willow stands, though tendrilous and bending...
...life moving upward into light...
...I devour it, searching carefully for small bones or grit of sound and shiver in the presence of those crude eyes which bring such odd fare...
...Wolf sees those crude eyes of Silence staring unrelenting, unblinking, beckoning its power be returned...
...I am that wolf in the willow, growing a single ring, barely discernible, in the span of thirteen moons...
...No echo, ever...
...a wolf crouches in its core, a wolf with willow eyes...
...Guarding, storing light, close to the ground my life...
...Mine: apprenticed power...
...My heart goes hoarse without speech...
...Those eyes are fire...
...Absence is entity...
...I swallow green fire and run beyond a howl's force, looking for speech, finding only Silence staring back, beckoning in darkness...
...I paw the ground and look into wind for certainty...
...I howl, green-throated, then run upward into light...
...Brief sun, stark land forms, no echoes, air is made of ears and lips which speak soundlessly...
...The eyes learn to look into wind...
...Silence holds, though fleeting and rare, light a storm of color...
...My insides roar...
...Its fierceness, a test of fragility, lasts year upon year...
...No malice here...
Vol. 116 • October 1989 • No. 17
