Set the Needle
Ann Dernier
A hawk feather stabbed like a dart the dirt road
This morning, as though to play that mile of desert.
And in the stream we crossed to Seven Falls
Pointing ourselves in the pitch of water’s warbly wave,
The melody changed against our bodies in the rushing current,
Reedy woodwinds added by the bending brush.
Each of us one needle cutting a master on earth.
Even the man on the moon set a flag in the groove
In the Sea of Tranquility to hear the tune of that lunar mare,
Like the first recording of sound scratched in soot —
The hill-and-dale pattern of Au Clare de la Lune,
. . . . . . . Loan me your pen to write something down.
And the way your arm swings over my waist at night
At the spot where the music begins with that breathy start.
From In the Fury
Available from Grey Book Press (scroll down)
Ann Dernier grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, but now calls the Sonoran desert her home. She is the editor of two poetry collections, Best of Kore Press Poetry 2012 and Writing Out of the Darkness: An Anthology of Poetry by Refugees in Transition, and also serves as managing editor at Kore Press. She earned a BA from the University of Arizona and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her collection, In the Fury, was short-listed for the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and the 2014 Robert Dana Prize at Anhinga Press. She and Chris Smith have two children, Nick and Hadley, and live in Tucson, Arizona.
