Angle of Repose Suite
I.
To hoard and yet avoid collapse
Mind well the Angle of Repose:
Retaining walls must never lapse
To hoard and yet avoid collapse.
When Rumor jeers and when it claps,
To safeguard all your joys and woes,
To hoard and yet avoid collapse,
Mind well the Angle of Repose.
II.
The point at which things start to slide
Is called the angle of repose:
Some piles are deep and others wide.
We sit at rest or quake and hide;
Nobody ever really knows
The point at which things start to slide.
The words I wrote, the tears I cried,
What I forgave, the sins I chose,
Some piles are deep and others wide,
Some things stick, while others glide.
For nerve, our angle’s to suppose
The point at which things start to slide
Will never come – but woe betide
The moment that our eyes are closed:
Some piles are deep and others wide.
Your heart and ears must be your guide;
A rumble deep in earth may pose
The point at which things start to slide.
Some piles are deep and others wide.
III. Dyatlov Pass, 1959
It could not be an avalanche that slew
The Russian friends who slept by one and two
Between the cedars, locked in crumpled pose,
Half-dressed and missing lips or eyes and nose.
No fall of snow could strip some of one shoe –
Nor Mila’s hat to Semyon’s head could move –
Nor snowy knife could slice their tent wall through.
Such savage, war-like damage just by snows?
It could not be.
That fracture on his head – and Zina’s bruise –
It must be men. Investigating crew
Found, first of all, the site the hikers chose
Was safe within an angle of repose
Not twenty, nothing to dislodge the floes...
Just so, my snowcrash can’t be what hurt you.
It could not be.
IV.
The angle of repose for you and me
Should be far less than thirty cold degrees.
No sliding down – a leveled plane should be
The angle of repose for you and me.
May we not sleep? Must we still climb and ski
And never sigh back gentle into ease?
The angle of repose for you and me
Should be far less than thirty cold degrees.
Ruth Johnston has been writing poetry for four decades. Her poems have appeared previously in Measure and Modern Age, and she has work forthcoming in The Lyric.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 