Natalie Padilla Young

In the right light

with the right speed,
a caged and brief perspective,
the mountains move 

toward me, not me to them. Closer
and farther away 

it’s hard to determine
distance, if trees or brush
populate the slope, if the stream runs 

the same way it sounds, if we decided
to skip the creation of something 

in our likeness
or simply couldn’t. Instead,
years fill with dogs 

whose lives accumulate
too fast and faster. With this view 

shadows are short. Sunlight hits
gold on the windows. It’s escaping
another day. The red mountain 

warms. A sky so lovely
it feels like a bruise.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Natalie Padilla Young is a co-founder and editor in chief of the poetry magazine Sugar House Review. She is half Puerto Rican and half Brigham Young, working as an art director for a Salt Lake City ad agency. Her first book All of This Was Once Under Water is out from Quarter Press (2023). Natalie’s poetry has appeared in swamp pink, Green Mountains Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Los Angeles Times, Tar River Poetry, Terrain.org and elsewhere. She serves on the Lightscatter Press board and lives in southern Utah with the poet Nano Taggart and two dogs. NatalieYoungArts.com