Joshua Dugat
How much water must gather
for a body
to become another body? You and I
are small as birds
in the basket of the North Cascades
and my breath catches
to see the terns
plummet below us,
one thousand feet
along the curved thumbnail
that holds the whole Skagit
back. Downriver there is a house
in which turbines draw
flecks of power from the water
like a prospector. In two nights
we will be in Seattle,
with Ben and Michael and
your brother, where all the gold
glows. The gray waves
on Ross Lake cannot imagine
they will be stopped
where we are standing, changed
into another kind
of wave. We cannot
help but wonder
how the dam will one day
give way, enjoining us
into a current as sudden
and cold as a mountain. The canyon promises
the concrete, despite its youth
and tensile strength, that it is already
washing away, grist by grain. You are twelve weeks
pregnant and peering at the terns
as they wheel above the rocks,
riding the lip of the wind back up
to play in every pocket of sky
the dam has found
for them. Your hands are on your hips
and your back is to the lake. You turn
to see if I felt it too, these vibrations
underneath our feet, that groan
to stave off any breach, and long to
age like the cliffs
of basalt, to let
the water fall
and break.
Author Bio
Josh Dugat was born and raised in Texas, and now lives with his wife and young son in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he teaches with the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. He’s been awarded residencies and fellowships from the likes of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States. Josh holds a MFA in Poetry and MS in Geography from the University of Alabama, and his poems can be found in journals including the Literary Review and Floyd County Moonshine. A former school teacher, park ranger, and wildland firefighter, Josh enjoys making woodblock prints, fishing, and two-stepping.