“THERE’S NO THROUGH TRAIL” —HAN-SHAN, TRANSLATED BY GARY SNYDER

The mosses

by Julie Hanson

Issue: Spring/Summer 2021

do not move stones.

They have forested
the pitted places

and crevices,
populating globes

with continents.
It is either slow,

this work, or so rapid
no one notices,

but as modes
of travel go,

it is sufficient.

The first line is a fragment from Sappho, #145 as numbered in Anne Carson’s translation.

Listen to the author

About Julie Hanson

Julie Hanson’s collections are The Audible and the Evident, winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, (Ohio University Press, February 2020) and Unbeknownst (University of Iowa Press, 2011), Iowa Poetry Prize winner and 2012 Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist. Her poetry has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Center, recent and forthcoming publication in Plume, Under a Warm Green Linden, failbetter, Bat City Review, The Literary Review, and Copper Nickel.

Cold Mountain Review is published once a year in the Department of English at Appalachian State University. Support from Appalachian’s Office of Academic Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences enables CMR’s learning and publications program. The views and opinions expressed in CMR do not necessarily reflect those of university trustees, administration, faculty, students, or staff.

Support Cold Mountain Review