Jane Feinsod

Caldera

Base Camp

At the chalet. At the hut.
Our guide calls the mountain
a queen. Don’t laugh. Summer,
still an incisor shakes. Then,
nightfall. We take small sips.
Lemon, birch, moss on
the tongue. Don’t choke.
I ask stupid questions. 

Something about pink-
footed geese. Something else
about reindeer tracks. If it’s true
that lavender lives here, waits
for ice to thaw, waits for
a mouth to graze it. If the
ice caves are behind us,
if it’s too late to go down. 

In my next life, I promise
to get better at this. On my next
go, I’ll bring a tape recorder,
spite my mouth and spare my hands.

Ground Path 

I am not in my next life yet.
But on this go, fog feeling
gilded. What kind of meadow
lurches at you? Declines a drought? 

Wind through blades
hums “no thank you,”
and then goes mute. 

Our guide spits. Apologizes
for the lack. Promises more
to come, when out the meadows. 

Promises phlox, bridges, gargantuan
rivers, milkweed that reaches your waist,
glaciers, blue glaciers, calderas. 

Asks if you’ve ever eaten fox.
Asks what game you know.

Vertical Ascent 

I know the spiral now.
It’s like I live in it.

On this go, I want to try
considering the trail by its scent.  

Which is missing,
which is nothing. 

[On the dearth of trees:
a slight and acrid anger.
It’s natural, as the guide
mentioned. Which is?
That there are no trees?
Or the anger.] 

Maybe it’s the endless
walk upwards to the caldera, 

the cauldron, the lake
inside the volcano 

that’s insane making.
A twitch in the leg 

followed by a twitch
in the left eye. 

Dehydration, the guide
offers. It’s touching, 

this diagnosis gifted
by a sage among climbers.

[In the evening, the guide
will ask me how
a woman becomes
this splenetic. Especially
when she is amongst
this particular splendor.
I will have no answers
except for the saliva
I swallow rather than spit.] 

One of a thousand twitchings
then one single aching. 

The guide will not carry me
to the top and I wouldn’t 

want that from anyone or the guide,
not ever. I wouldn’t want that, not ever. 

[I forgot to mention it.
That I could have sworn
I saw a robin and her egg.
But there are no trees for a nest.
It made me bitter,
made my spleen bitter.
It was a glitch. What was a glitch?
Listen to me.
Was the glitch in the spleen
or the egg?]

Summit Crater 

When we arrive, will it feel like home?
I know the answer. I don’t ask, not this time.
I spare my mouth and give up my knees and feet.
I won’t even ask the better question: 

When we arrive, will I make it to my next life
as a ghost seer, monarch butterfly collector,
disembodied voice, velvet wearer, ice caver,
fire starter, master arborist, caldera dweller?

A Lake Called Caldera

Blue, orange, blue again.
This is what happens
when world breaks,
metallurgy and lake making, 

cratering. Tephra with a
scent called glass or sulfur,
traveling south into a bigger
body of water. Oceaning.
I waited for the gorge.
No, I sought it out. Yes,
back of the throat,
squalling for the sight of it. 

In my next life, I will make
new geographies, a tree
for a nest in the blueprint,
meticulous. 

On my next go, feverous
ice caves and searches for
a trapped lavender root,
spleen saving.

In this one, aftermath
of a holocene: our guide
giving us strawberries,
astrolabes, beach towels.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Jane Feinsod is a poet and educator living and working in Philadelphia. She received her MFA from UMass-Amherst, where she was named a Rose Fellow. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Redivider, Phoebe, The Arkansas International and elsewhere.