SUN’S CUP
The Grail is in the seeking - “The Grail,” Samuel Hoffenstein

This, like every dawn, sparks against
dry stone in search of a thirsty man’s last
drop of water. On the summit trail,
the cascade tastes of childhood.

Kodacolor lupine is just a memory
in the generations of wildflower.
However carefully we step, we leave
our footprints eroding into rock.

What have I been climbing for?
The vista point, the long view,
an echo which might be the wind.
Snowmelt cuts

stairs in granite,
smooth underwater bowls
to which I dip my cupped hands
in search of blessing.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in America, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her latest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.

Email: Taylor Graham

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