If I Had Known You Were Listening

by Stuart Dischell

I would have told you about the ice cave,
How the storm on the glacier sent me
Where others and animals had been.

I would have told you about the ice cave
That stank in the thin dark air
Where others and animals had been.
Even though their bodies were frozen,

They stank in the thin dark air,
And I could not breathe inside
Even though the bodies were frozen
And I had my bottled oxygen

And I could not breathe inside
And I camped out on the mountain
And I had my bottled oxygen
And the wind left no prints on the snow.

STUART DISCHELL is the author of Good Hope Road, a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues, Dig Safe, Backwards Days and Children With Enemies and the pamphlets Animate Earth and Touch Monkey and the chapbook Standing on Z. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Agni, The New Republic, Slate, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and anthologies including Essential Poems, Hammer and Blaze, Pushcart Prize, and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems. A recipient of awards from the NEA, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.