The
hoist upward into that land
loaded at the top—
wild raisin, mountain
ash, the alder and the stout
fir and the glaring hair moss—oh
this instant—reached—again
again the open summit cracks
and fire brazes the gray
rocks under fire-coal lichens
dark gyrons into
the white-throat’s strike off
point of a spruce
From Burnt Mountain by Emily Wilson, published October 2025 by the University of Iowa Press. Copyright © 2025 by Emily Wilson.
Emily Wilson is author of The Great Medieval Yellows (University of Iowa Press, 2015), Micrographia (Univeristy of Iowa Press, 2008), and The Keep (University of Iowa Press, 2001). A visual artist as well as a writer, Wilson lives in Iowa City, Iowa, and western Maine.
