by Deidre Cavazzi

Expanse of grass written over with the slender cursive of flowing water, beneath a sky so blue it is unnamable. On either side the rise of mountains, alpine backbone of Switzerland. The Greina can only be crossed on foot or as the eagle flies. Drawings, poems, bodies, passion: this is a place that barely escaped being tamed.

The year of my birth, my future father-in-law sees Bryan Cyril Thurston’s poems and paintings of the Greina on display in Zurich, is captivated by the jagged strokes of scree in charcoal, the ache of mountains that are not meant to hold the belly of a lake. Only poetry can save the Greina becomes a rallying cry, a howl on behalf of nature. Alfredo joins the protests against the planned damming of the Greina, against man’s heavy-handed harnessing of mountains, against the sacrifice of wildflowered meadows and snow at the intersection of spring. He cannot possibly know that many years later, his son will propose to me in the heart of this otherworldly green, with no one but the sun and a distant scattering of marmots to witness us. Only after the answer is a circle around my finger and we have slept three nights in alpine huts, singing and sipping tea with strangers under a canopy of stars, only after we return to Zurich will Alfredo tell us. Tell us how he helped to save the Greina decades earlier, tell us that a valley is a meeting place for earth and sky. A place where artists and lovers can change the world, or rather, where they can make sure that what matters remains unchanged.

Deidre Cavazzi is a poet and choreographer who can often be found wandering in the California redwoods or snuggled up with a good book. Her chapbook, carapace, root & feather, is available through Bottlecap Press, and her writing appears in journals including Soundings East, Rust & Moth, Corpus Callosum, Crow & Cross Keys, Merion West, Roanoke Review and Polarlit. She has been an artist-in-residence with The Arctic Circle in Svalbard, the Fish Factory Creative Centre in Iceland, and a guest artist at the University of Galway, Ireland.