Elizabeth Welsh
Mountains build
Together, her mountain-father and mountain-mother
built a bach and adopted a wily half-feral dog they called Dog.
She visited the beauteous lakes to sketch and stopped
to help them gather dry grass and pine needles for mud bricks.
Her mountain-father dallied with a crusted thermometer for days,
monitoring the temperature inside the bricks, holding them swaddled
like mewling newborns.
She woke to find him encircled by a small midsummer ritual circle
of clay, mud, loam, silt, straw.
Dog watched intently. Sleepless.
Elizabeth Welsh is a poet and academic editor. Her work has previously appeared in Landfall, Takahē, Magma and Poetry NZ. She is currently working on her first poetry collection.