Durannapass, Prättigau, Switzerland

All but invisible in certain lights,
it looks as though a hand had shoved it deep
into the cliff, from which it could be pulled
to pry a chapter from its deckled strata.

Among the valley’s less dramatic sights,
this volume, tilting outward from a peak,
had not been titled. So one day I did.
The edges of its pages sharpened, starker.

Was this my secret ledger of the fights
we didn’t have, the privacies of sleep,
a digest of the things I left unsaid,
the battered primer of my childhood stutter?

What kind of book is it that no one writes?
A sediment of acts will ash each leaf.
Inscribed as faults, the veins of shame or pride
are crystal, legible until they shatter.

Grandmother kept a diary of slights
close by her as she died, for us to read
her fine accounting: “Ten a.m.: Man rude.”
We laughed at things that made her smaller, sadder.

Perhaps it’s only best to name the heights.
The slope down from its shelf is much too steep,
a density of contours inked in red.
We hike below and hear its rubble scatter.