Dana Yost: "A New Approach"

There are more ways to look
at yourself than just considering
yourself, I am told. You can be
defined by the way you treat others,
the way you behave in circumstances
beyond your dictate.
You can be defined by outlasting
your past, not prefiguring your future,
by finding a point at the center
of a therapist’s hand-drawn crucifix
and being comfortable
there: Apart from yourself
and the judgments and grievances
of the brain, at ease over coffee
with an elder, trying to learn
why a skid loader needs
the hydraulics it does,
not slope-shouldered with
the ruins of a decision—not yours—
that left you where you are today.
But enjoying the way the red finch
lands on the rail of the feeder
a few feet in front of you.



"A New Approach" by Dana Yost. Originally published in The Awakenings Review (Spring 2011). Presented here by poet submission. 

Art credit: "House Finch male variant," photograph taken in Baja California Sur, Mexico, by Chris and Debbie Llewellyn.

  

Dana Yost: "The Three Bridges Trail"

There are walks I will want to take
in my last days, and one will be the Three Bridges Trail.
Find someone to lead me, if I am frail, through
the narrow path, across the three stone bridges.
But I will see, hear, smell for myself.
It is almost primeval, the brush to my knees, even
my chest: the thick leaves turning day to night
almost as soon as we set foot on the dust and gravel.
It is like stepping beyond the curtain, into the Emerald City.
The birds flutter and sing and one says “pur-dee, pur-dee, pur-dee,”
in a branch over my head.
At other times, a stillness: no animals, the wind cut off
by the thickness of leaves: it is almost German forest, medieval.
Over there, the clearing: can’t you picture a dozen furied
swords and axes clanging and cleaving, unmerciless battle?
No?
But, then, my imagination runs beyond reach of the reins.

Walk with me, in the green and the cool.
Walk with me, on the ledge of the stone
of the bridges:
the fall is not far, if it comes to that,
and the undergrowth will catch you,
soft. Blanket of a crib.
Walk with me, when those last few days are near,
and think with me not of what life might have been,
but what it was — what it is: as real as the doe
in deep staredown with us, as real as the aroma of juniper.
Did we matter? Did we lift the lives of others?
Did we love, did we give enough time to the stars,
did we dream — or was it all mad?
Look at the butterflies, the gem-green beetle.
I will walk here again, in my last days,
the Three Bridges Trail:
whatever deeds define my life,
I know finding this place
is one of the good.

"The Three Bridges Trail" by Dana Yost. First published in Jellyfish Whispers, July 2012.

Photograph: "Arched Stone Foot Bridge at Old Man’s Cave," by Dustin May, 2012 (originally color).