Beth’s Mountain: A Ghazal by Linda Blaskey

for Beth Copeland

Yesterday, warring fog and sun unmoored her mountain.

She has come to expect this dodge-and-feint of her mountain.

One day grandmother, another, harsh lover—

such is the changeling face of her mountain.

From a mended cup she sips tea, golden like

a Phoenician bead; keeps an eye on her mountain.

Words put on paper, honey poured in jars, porch

lattice mended. Outside, steadfast, her mountain.

This is what Sue-now-called-Linda knows:

after love loss you will be found by your mountain.

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Linda Blaskey is the author of Farm (Bay Oak Publishers), White Horses (Mojave River Press), and, in collaboration with three other poets, Walking the Sunken Boards (Pond Road Press). She is the recipient of two fellowship grants from Delaware Division of the Arts and her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2014, and North Carolina’s “Poetry on the Bus” project. Her short story “The Haircut” was dramatically presented at the Adrienne Theater in Philadelphia by InterAct Theatre’s Writing Aloud! program. She is poetry editor for The Broadkill Review.