Traci Brimhall

The field is empty but its dead trees are

to be still as the puddles where scorpions gather.

Beauty can be so shy, so painful, like Moses

beholding God’s back and burning. Memory

I am almost strong enough for the world again.

Then there it is—a cow’s bleached hip bones

scooping up twilight. Something in me wakes

like the bush on fire and calls itself a bird.

Fall 2024 - Land

Poetry

PRACTICE

Just when I think yellow won’t happen again,
the water gets still enough to hold the sun.
I am reckless enough to believe the world
welcomes me. Just when I think lavender
is over, the meadow wakes up, the butterfly
appears, the sun sets once again. I never
meant to want too much from love, but
the claws of tulips raged through our garden,
and I knew to run west, where horse apples
punctuate the trails and prickly pear asterisks
the edges—a warning not to stray.


I wish that ghost ranch meant something
besides abandoned because what is more
faithful than a ghost? I’d prefer to think
of the dead grazing on starshine and dew,
residents of a night kingdom tending to bats
and moths and somnambulant hikers lost
on the mountain. And I can go be among
the herd of them, a grief tourist, learning
about the linger before the after life begins.


And just when I think it’s over, that indigo
won’t happen again, the morning glories open.
When I think our love was snow—a beauty
with no destiny, I receive frozen sunflowers,
still bright in death. And just when I think
the day sky is the most profound blue I know,
I remember the way your ghost glowed when
the moonlight fell through it.

Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall

Poetry

Fall 2024 - Land

PRACTICE

Fall 2024 - Land

Ghost Ranch as Color Theory