Saturday book feature — A Cartography of Home — Hayden Saunier

I watch a fat apricot moon
rise through a hotel window in a foreign-to-me town
and burn across a lake above the steep slope

of a volcano’s perfect snow-capped cone
and because I am alone

I can’t help but wave to another woman
who stops on the walk outside to watch the same
postcard show. She waves back.

I jab my finger wildly at the rising moon
and she nods and jabs her finger wildly at it too

which makes us both tip back our heads to laugh
a laughter that the other cannot hear
which makes us both laugh more

and then, because this moon
is throwing down its molten river almost to the shore

we break into an oddball cha-cha
with each other, impromptu,
through distance and through glass.

We laugh again, our hands and faces to the sky.
Then nod and wave goodbye.

by Hayden Saunier, from A Cartography of Home (Terrapin Books, 2021)

Cover image by Hayden Saunier

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