Sean Hill

Goodnight

Of snow, boulders, and trees—carte blanche.
Goodnight, dangerous, says the avalanche

to the miner as she lays down a shroud—
a clean slate to make the ruddiest miner blanch.

A miner’s whisper or heart’s beat, too loud.
To the pull of weight and old ways snow bows.

And the miner replies, Goodnight, dangerous.
Some sounds too much—the snap of a branch—

to resist at times, and she slips topsy-turvy, snow
—boulders over trees—down the slope she goes

like the flow of blood a miner can’t stanch,
and they embrace under a settling cloud

of snow. The moment they’ll happen none know.
Goodnight, dangerous, says the avalanche.

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photo by Geoff Wyatt

Sean Hill is the author of Dangerous Goods, awarded the Minnesota Book Award, (Milkweed Editions, 2014) and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, named one of the Ten Books All Georgians Should Read in 2015 by the Georgia Center for the Book, (Georgia, 2008). His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, The Oxford American, Poetry, Tin House, and numerous other journals, and in several anthologies including Black Nature and Villanelles. He’s an assistant professor in the creative writing program at UA-Fairbanks.