Clade Song 8 Banner
CladeSong8 left

Leaving Bergen

          On the path down Ulriken the stones rearrange themselves. Halfway along there’s
a gap in the wall with a cross affixed at an odd angle.
                      Below, more stones
                      and a gravel beach.
          I grow tired of walking and of my own company, stop to rest on the slope above
the harbor. Wesselsgate 7's blue door nudges the sky with an elbow.
                      A house too can lose its way, heckled
                      by wind slashing from Finnmark.
          At the northernmost end of Sandviken, Swenson loops his ropes in a cross
beneath a pallet, raps twice on the hull for the crane—
                      water rises in the hold, the moon
                      glides across ice, left to right.
          Here, beside the tracks of a marten, I bury a part of myself beneath hardening snow
as a door opens onto a hallway,
          then to a moon-yellowed room alive with talk.
                      The days are numbered, if not in precise order.
A bull elk sips the first unfrozen stars.
                      I’m welcomed
                      for the last time.

 

 

 

  
Clade Song 8 right
Jeff Ewing

Jeff Ewing's poems can be found in literary journals including ZYZZYVA, Sugar House Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Willow Springs, Tule Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader. He is the author of the short story collection The Middle Ground, forthcoming in February 2019 from Into the Void Press. His fiction has been published in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including Crazyhorse, Southwest Review, Into the Void, Cold Mountain Review, and SAND. A number of Jeff’s essays and nonfiction pieces have been featured in the Sacramento News & Review, including "A Ditch Runs Through It", which was reprinted in Utne Reader. He grew up in Sacramento, and lives there still with his wife and daughter.