Say how it is, to be named?
An honor if a metaphor, if a lien a fiction.
What burst the healed seam and made you?
I rhyme air/ ear/ awe,
leaking the name of eden.
Was it preposterous? The idea of calling you home?
An agon by any other name, I darken the city.
The way snow defines a gash, Tahoma shifts history.
The wounded see in detail, led by that name.
You hold eerie bounties: pressure, winter, scale.
All called to Tahoma learn matter is a cloud.
I recast shape.
Draft of Terror, what rules you?
Planetary chords; ungainly rhythm.
Anonym, who listens?
Any caged stone hums the name of the mountain.
—
Katy Didden is the author of The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). She earned a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri, and her poems and essays have appeared in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Ecotone, 32 Poems, Diagram, and Poetry. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Ball State University.
Photo: Kara Lee Ruotolo, 2017.
Layout and Graphic Design: Kevin Tseng.
The title includes a quotation from Marianne Moore’s poem “An Octopus.”
Primary Source: Wickersham, James. “Is it Mount Tacoma, or Rainier?” Proceedings of the Tacoma Academy of Science, Tacoma, Washington. Second Edition. Tacoma: News Publishing Company, 1893. Retrieved on Google Books.