Like roofers

we climb over each other, slipping and catching the other’s 

hands until our feet are steady.  We check eaves, clear leaves, smooth 

wrinkles in the casing, then fall to the heat of our slate-shingled skin.

We are a choir, ensemble of song, just two mouths earnest in 

harmony.  We make mice in the walls weep, our voices pound 

tympani, take captive the inner ear of all who stand near.

We are Isabella Bird in Kurdistan, Nelly Bly circling earth, Marco Polo 

riding Mongol empires. We navigate by planets and stars, by the dark 

pulse of our organs, by pupils meeting pupils, grasses’ murmur at our feet –   

With no permission, seven decades in, we hike up stairs, climb to highlands, 

walk inclines foreign to our peers, heights newly reached to see Bar-headed 

Geese cross the Himalayas four miles up, to hear a bank of trumpets shout.  

We scale high level étage, Mares’ tails frozen above, countryside 

spread out like a toy town, gray and brown squares, dots of green, living 

bodies too small to see, some wet in wombs, some soon to die.  

I turn on the radio 

will myself to hear the news – 

only stories of us.

© Marti Snell, 2016

Mares' Tails by Nicholas A. Tonelli
from Wikimedia Commons