Hit play below to hear Kate Partridge read her poem “Eve from Above” and scroll down for the full text. “Eve From Above” is featured in MQR’s Summer 2020 issue.
Eve From Above
Enter dipping close
to the mountains, the sheep bouldering
their positions along
the ridge. As long
as you can feel the air
pressing against the mere
glass and engine rattle,
the mountains must be
on one side, the valley on the other.
Or else the image dies.
Or else the brush and purple flowers
draw higher
What does it mean to be patient?
Even the needles clinging on in
the breeze will let
go. Or the plant which, once
tread, takes one
hundred years to
reproduce its
head. A woman walks
the tree
line, tracing it with her body, and down
to the rocky
bed of fish
in spread formation, and back again
to the flowers purpled
by closeness
to the sun. The hillside does not end,
always pushing the outside
world up and down
on its shoulders.
Connecting, again, earth and sky.
I guess this is the time when everyone arrives.
The flowers grow as if they cannot
see themselves. The fish
after an origin
that is not seeking them.
You, watching, are like the paws
reaching at them from above,
muffled by the evening river’s roll;
you, watching, are like
the rocks shaken loose
from their beds,
a swifter rain. A face above, just
outlining its own moon.
Braided river pulled strand
by strand from its riverbank
husk. When the woman
bends into a drink of water
from the stream, the mosquitos fill
her mouth. She cannot let them out.
She will.
