Legend & Earthbridge
Kristin Berger
Image by Pine Watt
Legend
Because the ocean is rising,
you plan to walk every shore
while they still lace land.
This levels sorrow like a knife
scraping flour across the cup.
We will always miss a future
we will never know.
Whales send an imprint of air
to the surface to give fair warning
of their disappearing magic.
Cartographers never know if their homes
will be recognizable when they return:
they spend their lives leaving
whole swaths blank. Like us,
they are always beginning—
waiting for weather to direct our feet,
our corners of code and brevity
longing to be deciphered.
Earthbridge
Dear world, where would I be without you
under the green-blue river pillowing clay banks
river slitting through milky fog, clear as day.
I can see all the ways forward and behind.
Nests in leafless cottonwoods poise to clutch
an eagle, a heron. I want to hold someone
without thinking. How you pin me
between here and there, that unreachable island.
Dear blue envelope, please don't spill.
Contain this love for the other side.
Be the foothold, my submerged terra firma.
Keep us on the span when the water goes down.
Kristin Berger
Kristin Berger is the author of four poetry collections, Refugia (Persian Pony Press, 2019), Echolocation (Cirque Press, 2018), How Light Reaches Us (Aldrich Press, 2016), and For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008). A former member of the editorial collective, VoiceCatcher, and the co-host of The Lents Farmers Market Poetry Series, Kristin continues to be inspired by writing of protest, resistance, resiliency, beauty and hope through facilitating The Lents Poetry Project on Instagram. Recipient of residencies from Playa and OSU's Spring Creek Project, Kristin's work is influenced by Oregon's High Desert, Cascades, Coastal Range and all the Pacific Northwest's wild and interconnected landscapes. Her next book, Changing Woman, Changing Man: A High Desert Myth, a collaborative project with Eugene, Oregon printmaker, Diane Sandall, is forthcoming from Nightjar Press. Kristin lives in Portland, Oregon with her teenage children. More at kristinbergerpoet.com.