Distance

After Jordie Albiston’s ‘Cartography’

What is the space between this hut and that mountain

but impenetrable black, and frosty cold.

She is writing this at a table in the cabin,

spinning thoughts like threads, as if they can hold

her boys tighter, pull the mountain in, with their bold

tents blooming like flowers in the snow.

Can thoughts, or mad desire, shift the world

slightly, tilt ranges so their faces lower

to her own? Upthrust, tectonic forces, the whole slew

of geology sped up, so contour lines diminish

and lakes freeze, ice thickening to a deep blue

while those dark mountain peaks relinquish

distance; and this long night will finish.

Her writing is a thread to lure them back,

their faces filled with snow light, dolerite, the itch

of time alone, the cold breath of height. Face facts:

the contours between here and there are shifting. Pack,

and ask, what is the space between home and out there,

between their beginnings and these beginnings, but a lack

of courage; what is distance but a prayer?

Adrienne Eberhard