By Katherine Soniat

Child, or whatever stage of light you may be, why point
to mud at the bottom as the crane flies over?

Try on your shadow, all backlit and blank. Make faces
(no one sees you) at the world’s high ridges.
                                                                 You know
the ones with chin and brow that some attach to a mountain,
then hold on to forever.

One day you’ll come to the limestone caves where the babies
are posited.                                        (Small milky formulas) 

A changeling tale:.

Borne off, the child filled with clairvoyance. Light in a forest, the one
who can move love through the skin and bone frame of another.

Such prisms hang on the window of the world.

Katherine Soniat’s sixth collection of poetry, A Raft, A Boat, A Bridge, is recently out from Dream Horse Press. The Swing Girl, published by Louisiana State University Press, was selected as Best Collection of 2011 by the Poetry Council of North Carolina. A Shared Life won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared recently in Women’s Review of Books, Hotel Amerika and Crazyhorse, among others. She teaches in the Great Smokies Writers Program at UNC-Asheville. Website: www.katherinesoniat.com