Dancing in the Moonlight
Here is a crown of blackberries
I’ve woven of my grief before
I wade into the lake. Underwater
we don’t have to try, everything
we imagined in the span of weeks
distorts. Either our eyes do
or do not see it—no isthmus ever
connected your fields to my green.
Dear dove, Dear raven,
yes, I’m the fool to trust any
man. Take this berry, though
I know you yourself will eat it.
I will never lift you up
to the sky or kiss your temple
bell—
Here is your satchel. Inside
the peaches we plucked together—
me on the ladder, you on the grass
dreaming the direction for me to reach
you, or that we could ever be,
both, in season.
Winter Trails
Artist’s Point, Flagstaff Mountain
You open the door between day and night,
let out the starlings. The garden
rewilds into thicket. Clustered as night skies
in this season of all new things:
leaf buds, renewed every seven years—
cells replaced by new cells
so why not the soft bird
of your heart too?
You wrote your own invitation,
a new love breaking
through seed casements.
The fire warms now
the year who faces
two directions. A forest
wakes inside you even now.
*
Eldorado Canyon State Park
Somewhere from the alpine
she sees what I cannot.
In the snow a cat-print larger
than my hand, the snow melted by foot pads.
My sister says that being observed
is her worst fear though
she’s paid to observe the trails
others make into their own hearts—
She points out the spruce, ash, aspen.
But just beyond that ridge
Eyes which may not be eyes, gold.
I need to watch the road
of myself leading into canyon,
the brown dust, the snow
iced over on the mountainside without sun,
the creek where the winter mountain
chickadees bathe and preen.
Would you ever know I was here?
It’s nighting almost and I am again
caught in the dark forest of me,
though I’ve never seen this vista,
though I scramble over basalt and granite,
though no trail nor foot paths.
*
Eldorado Canyon State Park
The trailhead starts open to sky
to the treeline where it narrows
and the path cannot be seen for shadows
and its faint scrawl on earth or rock
And then from the dark
you turn a corner to see below
a valley in dappled white
evergreens stud the mountain
that rises and rises and you are rock
and sky and tree
*
Econlockhatee River Trail
The oaks, pencil thin,
walk across the pine scrub
after the builders clear
palmetto thickets. We
used to pull out the young fronds
and eat the palmhearts,
the spring-green sprig
tender in its inexperience of heat.
Lichen sprouts on the rivets
of bark. They face north,
and spread their pink.
And below, more palmetto
hearts to relish. How
I have wished for simple color,
for a single direction
to point the magnet of my heart,
cleared by fire and by men,
and to say, Here. Here.
I am still standing, my body
delicious with earth.
Rajiv Mohabir, poet, memoirist, and translator, is the author of five books of poetry, the latest is Seabeast (Four Way Books 2025). His books have been awarded gold in Forward Indies and Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His other honors include being finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature. His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. Currently he teaches poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder.