Back at West Dover
You will remember your sister
Saying she could smell winter coming,
Hickory char smoking in the stove,
Butter drippings and pepper steak.
You will remember cracking your heel
Through ice-glazed streams, mud lakes,
Crumbling handfuls of corn stalk,
Scattering your fists to the wind.
You'll remember scrambling up the pathless
Mountain in draughts of night-fir
To tongue frosted stars
From the eyes of Granite Face.
The highest slab awash with moonblue,
Lungburn stabbing your dizzy heart.
JASON TANDON is the author of two chapbooks, Flight (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2007) and Rumble Strip (Sunnyoutside Press). His first full-length collection, Give over the Heckler, was a finalist for the 2006 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. His poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Red Cedar Review, Euphony, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of New Hampshire and is an intern poetry editor at the Paris Review.
