Spring on the Yellowstone
       

Early wind, the loose pane rattles. Already
killdeer feign injury in the grass. Rimrock
junipers crouch and lean. The river,
clotted with the deadfall of cottonwood,
mounts its own carved banks.

Your bare foot flattens on the icy floor,
pokes the fetal ball of your dog.
You buckle the cold around your waist,
pull it over your head, whistle it into windows.
By mid-morning, rattlers lie like frets across the trail, owls

like blinking whole-notes on the limb above you.
The she-bear shambles through your camp
with her cub in tow. The ground plunges
into gorges, clambers back up into sage.
Then the afternoon light lies down on the wrack

until it breaks. Something not water courses
down the canyon. Later, you smell the river flooding—
cold-blooded brother of night—and drive to where
the blacktop crumbles. There, a horse borne away
by high water neighs to the sky, and goes under.

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Copyright © 2021 Jim Peterson All rights reserved
from The Horse Who Bears Me Away
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission