G-NT3806KSJP

The Grade


   



Weedy forgotten places along the grade
To stand, in the open, suddenly
A mountain steering down its dark
Out of rank woods buffeted
Weedy fragrant fraught on the grade
Thready buds of hawkweed
Sway the sallow clover under bezeled-
Rosy meadowsweet hovering the sedge
A sacristy of weeds in weed-chock
Broken beds of silvered stash
Trash of a forest pitched
Wherever you turn turn the glamour
River turnings of that grade
Itself the iron-jolted bracken



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.