Sinking Valley

the longer you gaze at the face of a limestone cliff

the more beasts begin to emerge

a puzzle of muzzles a marl of snarls

don’t call them angelic they’re not here for you

convening as if to meditate on a corpse

where the creek makes a brief above-ground appearance

oh white-breasted nuthatch with your anxiety song

who’s to say what’s real in a valley full of sinkholes

bare trees are brooms for this bitter wind to ride

right into the earth vibrating where they live

red cedars giving shelter to juncos

a locust still ornately thorned against mastodons

threadbare hemlocks unaccustomed to so much sun

i follow the groundwater back underground

and my glasses fog up in less than 50 feet

the creek has gained echoey voices

that may or may not be cave divers

drowned in pursuit of an inner space

hidden from the sun: a grove of impossible trees

stems said to be slender as drinking straws

having long ago met their better halves

growing down as they grew up

i emerge shivering into the frigid sunlight

the cliff is empty i come to no conclusions

at the next farm a hundred goats

graze their pasture down to the nubbins