David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in England, and spent several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in1978. He enjoys listening to very old music, birding, and hiking in the Arizona landscape. Along with poems in magazines, he has a list of chapbook publications with Places You Can’t Reach (Pudding House Publications) being the latest, and two recent books: A Normal Day Amazes Us (Kings Estate Press) and Return to Waking Life (Main Street Rag Publishing Company).

Arctic Dream



I am walking between stars
that break out of the snow.
Each footstep leaves a shallow imprint
in a long, straight line. Each breath
makes a little cloud. Hours melt into days.
The sun rolls along the world’s edge.
On I go, beyond hunger and thirst.
I wonder which religion put me here.
Is this a pilgrimage I’m on?
Will there be a shrine at the end?
I feel in the pocket of my coat
for an apple to place beside the candles
whose glow bleeds out of the horizon.
Walking keeps me warm, or it may be the air
around me. I check my watch:
white midnight. A bead of sweat
trickles from my brow
and I begin to worry
that I’ll be late, and wonder
whether there is life after ice.



*



Ice Music



The hiss when a continent dissolves

A whisper in the time of no daylight

Echoes from the pick when it hits

A human complaint translated into the language of seals

The crackling of light on an ice floe

Thunder trapped in a glacier

Wind crying for a foothold

The wristwatch of a lost explorer ticking from inside a snowdrift



*




Guanacaste


A kiskadee calls from a guanacaste
spreading in the park.
The brass band answers with a flourish
from the bare rehearsal room.
On a morning following thunderclaps
that came


not from the clouds
but through the earth, fine black hairs


lie in silence on the chipped turquoise paint
of the barber’s wooden floor.