Sublimation, a Swedish literary journal, published my poem “Second Chance” in their Nov/Dec 2025 edition (Issue 2.6). The poem was inspired by Louise Gluck’s “Vita Nova” and memories of several trips to Yosemite.
This is my third international appearance. I’m starting to feel like Hasselhoff.
Second Chance
after Louise Glück
The winter trail, a slushed footpath, occasionally an intact animal print
reminds a lonely hiker, he’s not alone.
Crossing a stream on a rustic bridge, southward the sun catches
the rippling water—diamonds, emeralds, sapphires.
Terrestrial starlight.
Yosemite. I wander from the treeline into an open snowfield.
A beached whale of snow, humpbacked, marks the site of a fallen pine,
recalled from a previous visit: charred roots exposed and writhing skyward.
Unwholesome. Pained.
Blanketed now, enshrouded, at peace.
A coyote—Wolf! the child in me misenthuses—lopes across the meadow.
Staggers. Unsteady. Its pelt haggard and rib-streaked.
The wind shifts, scattering clouds, sends the coyote skittering from my scent.
Suddenly, the sun reemerges,
setting the roadside drifts, acres of unblemished snow ablaze.
A blinding stellar nova.
A needle-stinging, eye-watering, sightless sight.
Stepping back into the woods, I wait for recovery.
The forest returns around me, gradually,
colors desaturated at first. Black and white. Two dimensional.
Relearning to see the world, taking precaution to guard my vision,
I hike into the shadow of granite cathedrals again,
catch the rumble of a distant waterfall in the otherwise silence,
ready to be overwhelmed by beauty once, twice (at least) more.
© 2025, 2026; first appeared in print at Sublimation, Nov/Dec 2025.