Threads

Glancing up, she asks, Is that a plane’s vapor trail? No, just
a bit of cirrostratus, I say, nearly lenticular. We talk
of last night’s low, take guesses at humidity, but the threads
of easy chatter evaporate in a forest hush. Beneath a sky
blooming cumulus over looming blue spruce, we spot a trail named
for Cave Creek, where alpine runoff slips subterranean.

She’s looking for thumb-size orchids waking from a subterranean
slumber. Yellow lady slippers—C. parviflorum—I know only
that they’re bigger than the fairy slippers and are also named
for a shoe. I don’t say such, because she’s speaking
to timid faces unfolding to a July sky
where the feathered cirrus splays its threads.

I ponder the probability of thunderstorms as we tread
off-trail through a patch of penstemons. She praises the subtle
scarlet hues but zeros in on shooting stars, a sky-
name apt for little lavender arrows. Then, just
ahead: constellations of yellow. I stop my patter
as she counts the little lemon heads—better left unlabeled,

after all, than to conjure some debutante foot named
for a buttery blossom. Swallow-swift, my mind threads
ahead to the place in the tale where she rhapsodizes
on velvet petals and roots snaking subterranean.
See, I’m not really the terrestrial type, I just
want to wander skyward. Because a mind on sky—

even when it blathers—packs a parcel of airborne
emancipation. So, I’m partial to bluebells, named
for the fugitive hue cast just
before the sun throws flaming threads
of amber and silver on juniper. For my typical subliminal
logic, that’s a pretty good proxy for common talk.

Not exactly though, because the garrulous stream talks
to mosses, pines, and ravens croaking to the sky.
Thaw-water has its say before trundling on to underground
obscurity. So whatever flower or shrub name
she invokes is perfect. And I know the next thread
of rumination is breakable, it’s just

talk naming wonders fallen
from an unreachable sky. The sky, it threads
subterranean just enough.

C. JOHN GRAHAM

C. John Graham’s poems have appeared in The Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Kestrel, and Blue Mesa Review, among other publications. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and, until retirement, worked at a particle accelerator facility. He’s now a search and rescue pilot and a part-time water gardener.