Route 7 Review | Page 38

The Pearly Chaos By: William Doreski The ice is skating from the sky to spread itself like tissue across our pale exhalations. No driving to the post office or supermarket today. No walk in heaving evergreen forest this morning, the yak of crows angry as runaway commas. You in your city loft remain aloof from the pearly chaos. Here in the New Hampshire woods the creak of overladen trees threatens to smash a culture and release its meanest spirits. Not even the grossest lyric can absolve the landscape and thaw the skim on which no one, not even the embodied Jesus, could walk. The crows call us both by name, but sealed inside your urban shell you’re secure as a hermit crab. Naked enough to pass the most minute inspection, I stand before the mirror and hope this self-erasure is gradual enough to allow me to complete my study of horizon lines competing across the seasons. I also hope to greet you someday where weather intersects weather in a chorus of elegant sighs. We’ll shake hands across the gap and salute ourselves goodbye for good, all the ice melted and the crackle of sunlight flattering our creased expressions as if framing us in history.