El Capitan
Facing directly
the high forehead
of Capitan,
there is a stream no one goes to
because the trail is faint
and there is no marker
Go there.
Walk
until the banks crouch down next to the water
and she will glide over you cooly
with her weight
and her will.
This is how you get to touch
the mountain,
for she has just come from there.
Lay under the protective
slant
of his
towering face
afterward and let the sun dry you.
No one will come.
No one will come
because they don’t know
and they are afraid
to go where signs aren’t.
Bare Heart
Ivy climbs,
growing in thin spears
toward the pinhole that is sky
and waking wonder
Loose in my veins is
a plant like this,
a climber
My own will brings me
to lay heart upon chopping block,
to squelch out its green juices
in a way that makes others shudder,
saying,
Wait!
We weren’t prepared to see that!
We women who pray before stones lay our hearts bare.
I am
the resin that falls
from the tree, oozing its immaculate complexity
toward cragged cracks that may catch it
but usually
don’t
and I find myself trailing white and dry
down asphalt
to drains.
Leah Baker is an English teacher at a public high school, and works regularly with her students to develop, refine, and submit their own writing for publishing. As for herself, she has had her work featured most recently in Panoplyzine, Soliloquies Anthology, The Raw Art Review, and Sheepshead Review.