BY ANGIE MACRI

Echo, Orion, in steel wood

and flat wood,

born on sand left from timbering.

As I climbed the rose hill,

you climbed the pine hill.

As I found the briar hill,

you found the spring,

and the grove hill was the most pleasant,

oaks above us in towers

built on red sand, reminiscent

of the gulf where ships

run across the horizon, ocean

of steel and flat water.

So I wouldn’t drown, you told the story

of hunting by moon in sand, cotton

in bronze constellations

where the wood had been clearcut, the heat

of no voices climbing.

Echo, Hector, in burnt corn

and smut eye,

taming horses on black prairie

or in longleaf pine.

Like everyone, we loved the pine orchard,

the pine level, yellow

pine, and pine apple,

which we imagined from across the gulf,

an ocean apple cut open to ripeness.

While you entered the vineland,

I named a half acre.

While I ate from the lower peach tree,

you found the vinegar bend

where the trains run faster than horses

broken by your hands.

Dead again in myths, we crossed

the sand, the pine beloved even by gods

more than your body.

Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. Her recent work appears in The Cincinnati Review, Quarterly West, and South Dakota Review. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs and teaches at Hendrix College.

Process Note: When I was little, I liked reading maps, learning the names of places, imagining what might be there. These two love songs come from driving through Alabama.