Deborah H. Doolittle
Mountain Folds
catch the most sunlight,
the ridgeline a bristle brush
of oaks and pine.
There is a peculiar precision
to the crease you press
with your thumb.
How the edges meet as if
embracing, as if easing
into a parallel dimension.
Once again, you prove
the world—though it may have
started out that way—is
not flat, not quashed like a bug,
there are valleys, always,
lying deep and dark
and unexpected, like these
paper cranes flapping across
the tabletop,
arranged into a strange
migration you launched
with a single fold.