Graffiti
by Miriam Sagan on Jul 27, 2015
She falls from the ledge, a rocky outcropping in an otherwise featureless tundra, breaks her thigh bone in two places. No one comes. The sun rises twice. Dehydrated, delirious, she senses a yellow panther circling her, smells its yaw, feels only resignation. But it is the wind above her dying breath that sustains her, a great swan, wingspan touching both horizons, inner and outer, at the same moment.
Then the band, the people, come back for her, worried, frantic. The old woman sets the bone, but of course she’ll walk with a limp for the rest of her life. But she is changed. Everyone has seen the paw prints of the panther. No one has seen as much as a feather from the wing of the swan.
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 