Thérèse Bachand

METTLE: A LOST TRIPTYCH (1) Un[draft]ed Transcendence In [3]D   A mountain hillside is sometimes [small and literal] - [an island in your television set]. [Out in the open] crickets pulse in messengered light. Ear to ground, [I wondered why it was] a surface crosshatched by insect roar. Flowers [which hold continuity, if not content] clench stamen, lavender trumpets, rose chimneyed arcades. I [am protective], read “there is a subtle sad aggression”* to a curious mama cow who chumps semi-circle against my left flank [collateral damage]. Twin cows hoofing over, lash-long and still tufted in baby fur see [their reflection in each other]. Not to startle, to [make less noise here]. Contract of lightening and clouds raise bovine eyes toward ascent & croppings. Pencil in rain [a spectacle even we cant escape]. This taking [repetition of memory], this getting of cows to pasture. [I cant control whats lost]. A swift breath combs now hillside in emphasis. I’m seeing in[3]- D. Warm raindrops [unpunctuated] on mattress of blade and petal weft. This [voice-over will offer a vision]. Our faces repeat cooled and [in one sense]enigmatic.   *p. 38, Prageeta Sharma, The Opening Question           (2) Cold Poppy I do not feel I can fill someone with the potential of my being. My being is beyond potential because it already is. Sometimes the other can appear to us this way. This is a slip of imagination, as if to state: Running girls appear on the left and exit, right of frame. Perhaps hard sunlight is the last sinister reality. The tree’s shadow is executed “darker” or “in relief”. If I relinquish too much of this speculation, I will always be cold.           (3) The Furrow   Ice skating on asphalt a rapid declension slowed by grip of blade. On road, head above, above fall of houses, trees and shrubs --- the white coiffed fence, an abrupt turn in road. Not scary, there is little speed here, this slicing, churned dustbeds to village and beige, lemon scented home. Preadolescent boys are alert to field. They voice across avenue, a stretch hemmed by marguerites and the soft upward ascension of pine. The forest returns sequestering trace emotions. Equanimous those grey eyes bereft of mortal suspense.       - - - - - -

Thérèse Bachand is the author of luce a cavallo (Green Integer, 2009) and the forthcoming Daughter of the Ephemeral Word (i.e. press). She has spent most of the last quarter century in Los Angeles, where she raised two daughters. She works with 4-6 year olds at the UCLA Lab School.