Margaret J. Hoehn
Traveling Without A Map

Dawn, and the earth has stilled its
motion so this hour might bloom
within itself to find its own slow pace:
the hillside so bright with fennel
and vetch that one must leave this life

to enter the labyrinth of wild grass
threading up from loam, sun spangling
off the blackbird’s trill, hollow tapping
of a flicker in a distant oak, a red–tailed
hawk flapping up from an elm,

three vultures overhead, sketching
their ravenous stories into the shape
of rings. And who isn’t all of these
things: song; hammer; hunter;
scavenger, greedy for every scrap of life?

*

Margaret J. Hoehn lives with her husband and two children in Sacramento, CA. Her work has appeared, or will appear, in Margie, Nimrod, North American Review, and The Madison Review. She is the author of three chapbooks and a book, The Trajectory of Sunflowers (The Backwaters Press, 2004).

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