Tremblay, McCord, Cooper, Averill, and Petersen

  
Poems by Bill Tremblay
             

  
  
Iron Mountain 

                    
At timberline
beside a hanging lake
tinted the teal isotope of iron
as I look at Long’s Peak
butterflies flutter Bach trills
among tundra flowers.
Two elk bound past.
Then as I cross scree fields
granite talus bows out, tilting
my balance so askew I gag,
brain spun with light oxygen
and spider belly-down hand
and foot, spraying debris
into air below, setting off
a childhood memory—
once in the black punishment
corner of my bedroom
when I was nine I saw a Cro Magnon
sitting cross-legged at a cave mouth
in the Pyrennes, gazing down
at a river valley.  No longings,
no regrets clouded the membrane
between the sea of grass
and the green sparkle of eyes.