Clayton, Idaho
I scale up the wolf-bones of the hill
where no one’s been, look out toward mine road,
pick-ups, blue river. (I’m only saying
what I see. Trying to be better.) I take
my body through paces, then do it all backward.
Go to town, shake down the man-poet for coins
and mine some femininity from the mountains:
or maybe I could just be a shadow
hopping over the tracks. No one’s trying
to be beautiful here. River guides’ eyes
hold the whole of it as they drink coffee
outside the café. What I’m saying
is that here newspapers fly on the wind.
I let it be a photograph
with no caption, story, end. The Western
hills buck up in rude tectonics, ready
to slip. You can sit and watch
the birds circle their tops,
read the sky’s every minute. You can wait
as earth’s curl takes the valley into darkness:
first the source of the river, then its mouth.
Gulf Stream Magazine 