By Barbara Hurd

1)

Years after he died, the heaviness lifted 
and then I felt lost. No longer anchored in grief, 
I’ve landed in the rubble of aftermath.
The photo contends something large 
once happened here, but all that remains 
are unblossomed hills sliding down 
the slopes of themselves, a scree of stones so old 
they’ve let go of their dreams.

If I still had plans, they’d be buried nearby 
or scattered like ashes.
Nothing in me wants to replant.
The mind skitters in a place like this,
imagines Ariadne outside the Labyrinth
handing Theseus the thread that will save him. 
With hope in her heart and betrayal in her future,   
she is, in this way, like all of us 
before the real wounding begins. 

2)

The stranger I’m becoming 
wakes up with no use for mirrors, 
no need to see my face amid the debris 
and framed now only by stones. 
I’m learning that wind in a wasteland 
is called emptiness. 
I didn’t know how insistent it could be. 

3) 

But stones are both themselves 
and their own shadows which, 
twined into thread, lead me not 
out of labyrinths, not uphill or down 
but back to the time when a river ran here,
a torrent that jumbled limestone and quartz, 
spread riprap over the hills and poured on top 
a trail of broken basalt that still holds 
its memory of lava, its millennia of cooling.

The word basalt is derived from “touchstone.” 
Its practice is to never doubt change, 
however slow, to never distrust 
the persistence of water 
that will someday re-green even a valley like this,
where I too am learning to be scoured 
by the bleakness that comes 
before whatever comes next.