- Prepositions on the Mountain
When I was young I believed in verbs:A spotted fawn butted against his mother,
melt water trickled across the meadow,my hiking shoes pressed into damp soil—
but now I know it’s those prepositions:into across against that carry us through
in much the same way I come trailing afterthe girl in braids and blue-smocked dress
who stood at the blackboard in Mr. Davis’sEnglish class clutching the magic chalk
in her grimy hand, arranging the worldas she diagrammed sentences, hanging one
clause off another on the steep slopeof language. [End Page 102]