Bones: Amy Purevsuren

This is Amy Purevsuren, and these are several stanzas from my poem "Bones."

"I am a thing sculpted by footfall
day after day, over rocks and tundra,
along game trails or no trails on high passes.

I cross over bear tracks laid in sand,
just formed, nearly warm. We each pass
our ways privately. In my tent

I read, write, invent sense out of this life,
humming words into lines: words,
raining thoughts, water for my landscape.
...
Sometimes I am visited.
After the wind spends days blow-
drying the sky, no breath left,
the valley lies stark naked of sound.
I lie at night under the giant starless silence
listening to flower petals curl to sleep
like wolf tails, to vole bellies
whisper through grass, and for
the breath of a bear, which does
come, if you travel for a time in the north.
Usually, we are equally startled;
I holler hey hey hey and the bear
grunts and thunders off.
I crawl from my tent and stand naked
so as to see the maker of sounds."