John Calderazzo: GOOD MANNERS • Cleaver Magazine

Poetry by John Calderazzo
GOOD MANNERS

—Mt. Alice Trail, Seward

From the road, through a wall of brush,
huge, dank cave of trees, mushroom
bursts, mossy yews, spars bent like
dancers holding poses on an unlit stage.
Path so steep in places I pulled myself
up by roots thick as fire hoses. Two days
of car rattle from Fairbanks made me
climb fast, shaking off the highway,
sucking in piney air, submarine breath
of the rainforest. Laughter up the switch-
back trail, three young women slipping
through trees in bathing suits & flipflops,
towels draped over broad shoulders,
looking like they could have dolphined
through the bay from town. In my teaching
days, I loved to watch a woman on campus
who’d skateboard by, hair flying, chatting
on a flip phone. I love how my wife,
with an inch of height on me, never
ducks when we enter a room. I tried to
hang back, but they kept stopping, yakking,
gripping arms & shoulders, such great
friends. My legs begged to move,
so I decided to nod & speed by.
When I drew close, they looked me
over, my wire-gray beard, & one said,
Well, look who’s not even breathing hard.
We all laughed. An hour on, their voices
eaten by the forest, I broke into a flower
meadow, Resurrection Bay a chunk
of turquoise set among snow peaks.
A day-warmed boulder fitted itself to me,
& I sat back, eyes closed, the long blue vowels
of humpbacks pushing under the bay.
On my way down I glimpsed, in mid-
distance, the women naked in a meadow,
sauntering in the power & glory of their
bodies. I paused for a moment & moved on.

John Calderazzo’s work has appeared in Audubon, Brevity, Georgia Review, Orion, Terrain.org, Best American Nature Writing, Best Travel Adventure Stories, and Copper Canyon Press’s Here: Poems for the Planet. His first poetry collection is The Exact Weight of the Soul (Red Mountain Press, 2020); his second, In the Soup, is forthcoming from Middle Creek Press. His four nonfiction books include Rising Fire: Volcanoes & Our Inner Lives. English Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University, he’s won a Best CSU Teacher award. Nowadays, he teaches scientists storytelling skills to communicate with the public.