Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast

You read a book about the last great forest giants,
the last great thunderbolts, a perplexity carving the
earth as printed paper—a book on missing forest

made from forest. A gravestone for the dead made
from the living, mourning a thing by mourning its
mirror image, as if grief can be transferred, but grief

cannot be transferred. We always mourn the thing
we mourn alone. Night still brings its unending
silence over us whatever names it still may hold.

HANNAH RODABAUGH

Hannah Rodabaugh is the author of Lost Cathedral (forthcoming, Cornerstone Press) and three chapbooks of poetry. Her work is featured in The Indianapolis Review, Camas Magazine, Glassworks Magazine, and Berkeley Poetry Review. She is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and has twice been an artist-in-residence for the National Park Service. She teaches at Boise State University and The Cabin Literary Center.