Ernest Hilbert is the author of Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—and Last One Out. His fifth book, Storm Swimmer, was selected by Rowan Ricardo Phillips as the winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize. Visit him at www.ernesthilbert.com.
10,432 feet I reach the miner’s ruined cabin, Each year more like a stack of weathered timber Sinking from sight in the grass. Around the bend, the scene: Alpine Whiproot arcs from green, gentians spear The sun, and, above me, the pass. Here dwarf hawksbeard still lurks and sparks. Lilies and bluebells burn, where willow…
We’re iced-in, this April dawn. The misted window Hides the mountain. We’ve joined the ghosts who strain To live with us inside these rooms— They sail above the long mahogany floors, know Stories no more than air, harboring loves slain By time, who dined and sang, postponed their dooms. They linger before the silent stone…
