Great Coins of Alpine Snow / Shawn Pham

A few great, self-wrought wheels of snow lie still.
The leaping chamois sent them rolling away,
leaping along the narrow buried ledge.
May this rubble wildly accumulated
serve as reminder: drop that hunk of snow;
spit it out, unslump you, stumble not;
o poet, self-styled, how you have forgotten
in your crunchy footsteps, in your munching snow,
your heavy childish pant amid wet sucks
and grunts that silence must be helped.
after chamois, the world is pierced with silence
to the core, and all things’ cores are pierced—
but you sing, suck snow and yawp, servant of sound!

Shawn Pham is a travel photographer from San Francisco. While his health is good he spends the greater part of his years WWOOFing, camping, Couchsurfing, and photographing through Europe, Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique. His poetry has been published recently in The Ocotillo Review and Polyphony Lit.