“The exhale of your wilderness breath wakes me, and I wake up…”

Matt Daly’s poem from Deep Wild 2021, “At First Light,” wakes us up as we look forward to the warmth and light of spring again.

At First Light
—for Jade
Matt Daly

The exhale of your wilderness
breath wakes me, and I wake up.
The landscape inside you cascades

and gathers into a light rain
even here in a basin without clouds.
Your fine mist inhabits my lungs,

and my dry earth skin soaks
you in. Through tent mesh, I watch
limestone peaks turn to bronze

and tumbledown. The beaver
who slapped flat water through the sleek
evening is at it again at dawn. I wait

for your eyes to open so I can,
like the sunlight we saw flood
through a keyhole of rock to ember

the riverbed, pitch into them. You pour
into me. You erode what I was
in this beginning that begins again.

Deep Wild Journal is the home for creative work inspired by journeys to places where there are no roads. To read more stories about wild places, order your copy at deepwildjournal.com. Our Winter Sale is happening now!