Excerpt: Lynn Pedersen

From Tiktaalik, Adieu

Begin

No plans and preparations without first
having a vision, like an angel appearing to you
in your bedchamber, or thought slipping in
as you butter your toast, stir your coffee. And how 
to know what to pack, especially for a trip to where
no one’s ever been? Easier to follow
a river or a mountain range. I’ve read
there are few new roads, that most roads
follow common paths, follow the route
animals have taken, as if the animals know
the easiest grade to follow, the path of water, 
and the Oregon trail is just a dot-to-dot
of Indian footpaths—so Lewis and Clark,
or some other explorers, can’t take credit. 
And particularly difficult is the journey 
to a place that never existed—the Fountain of Youth. 
How do you map that? What part of a mountain range,
what river corresponds to fantasy? Beginning
is the hardest part, the part that unlike the vision
takes action. It takes loading the wagon,
telling the relatives goodbye, 
packing ammunition. You can never be sure 
what you will need, and so the Oregon Trail is littered—
trunks, clothes, pianos, chairs, silverware—
anything to lighten the load
before crossing the mountains. In any journey, 
there is a time when you have to ditch the sick
horse, the cumbersome companion—the naysayers.
It’s all about getting somewhere
(and maybe back again) with your hide intact. Otherwise, 
there’s no one to tell the story.

Eve Paints the Apple Tree

after lines from Cesare Pavese’s “Grappa in September”
			
Her problem, of course, is that she was never a child,
and so hadn’t the opportunity

to know the tree as a sapling, to climb
its branches, bark roughing her thighs, but only

viewed it with the distance of an adult.
Now it’s a question of staying on task with the story

of suffering a great pain. To climb 
perhaps another higher tree,

and look back into Eden at the lost crown,
to paint what she remembers later

of that last day: the sky’s blue witness, the leaves slick, glistening.
And the snake—had the snake not spoken? Was it

her imagination, trick of the shadows?
She must variegate the color of bark: siennas, umbers,

ochers, reds, even green moss. Branches
may break off during their lifespans,

may be riddled with knots, regrets.
Cover her right eye and look with the left,

then reverse: each eye sees color differently.
How does she paint the temptation? Every limb and leaf

of before and after? The fulcrum where everything
stops to ripen? Regret a tart yellow.

Black for secrets. Her children must know that the ochers and umbers
even now conceal fruit that would fall at a touch.

How to Move Away

It’s best to wake early, four, five a.m., while 
the neighbors sleep and the moon floats
like a pearl in a pool of ink. In half-light
the empty house is less familiar, less sad—the walls
with their nail holes, the carpet—its patterns of wear, 
curtains with no job to do. I sit
on my suitcase, eat powdered donuts; 
a napkin for a plate, juice out of a paper cup. 
Make one last check of the cupboards,
the drawers. Run my hand along
the countertops, the stair rail, trace
the walls with my fingertips, each scar 
proof of my childhood, my initials
carved into the tree of this, our sixth house.

My family could write a Handbook for Leaving—
the way we pack up during summer solstice, 
disconnect from people and places like an abrupt 
shutting off of electricity. My father’s convinced himself 
that the unknown is always better, the way the retina sees 
images upside down and the brain corrects. 

				        Here I smoked
candy cigarettes, my breath in winter passing
for smoke, pale green of my bedroom. I counted 
the number of intersections on the way to school (four). 
I bundle memories together, weight them with stones 
like unwanted kittens drowned in a creek.

What kind of animal constantly moves?
The point of migration is the return. 
We’re nomads without the base knowledge 
of where to find water. These moves are 
like arranged marriages; economics now, 
love later. Maybe it’s not against nature 
to move. Most of the body is no more 
than ten years old and blood renews itself 
every 90 days. But leaving disturbs the fabric
of a place. I’d rather stay and witness change.
My mother always wanting to plant perennials 
that we never stay to see. I pour some water
on the marigolds clattering around the mailbox, 
Aztec flowers of death, their strong scent 
a beacon to lost souls. Then we drive away, 
the blank windows like the blank eyes of 
the dead, waiting for someone to seal the past with a penny.

All three poems first appeared in Cider Press Review.

Lynn Pedersen’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in New England Review, Ecotone, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Palo Alto Review, and Heron Tree. She is the author of two chapbooks, Theories of Rain (Main Street Rag) and Tiktaalik, Adieu (Finishing Line Press). Her full-length collection, The Nomenclature of Small Things, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2016. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Her website is www.lynnpedersen.wordpress.com.

Tiktaalik, Adieu is available now from Finishing Line Press and from the author.