Pinturas Canyon, Argentina

 

Like the blind

signals of bats

 

echoing

against naked cliffs,

 

these rust-

red silhouettes

 

of palms,

fingers fanned,

 

must mean

to tell us something.

 

Maybe hearts

are like this

 

when they flit into the dark

of woods, hover over

 

rock outcroppings,

find homes

 

in crevices

among the scraggy

 

brush, cling

to rough dust-

 

covered sandstone—

to feel and feel again.

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MARTHA KALIN has received awards for her poetry including a Hopwood Award from the University of Michigan and several fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recent publications include poems in Anastamos, Don’t Just Sit There, and Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century, published by University Press of New England. Her chapbook, Afterlife and Mango, was published by Green Fuse Poetic Arts in 2013. She lives in Denver, Colorado.