medicine bow
sometimes I just want to sit alone in the dark
by firelight.
late teenage summers I fulfilled that need
outdoors - driving up into the snowies high enough
on a new moon and rounding up kindling.
all I did one trip is find the
right-sized log for the perfect chair stump
because I knew you would appreciate it
the next time you came here,
alone.
our one thing - this inconvenient place -
off telephone road just on the fringe.
an inconsistent border – a smattering
of trees – cushioning the dense lodgepole forest
being tickled with persistent aspen.
we were born there.
but the beetles and wind-swept fire
have killed the pine; the aspen now feel
like a weed.
they aren’t thick enough or
dense enough to block out the light from the
inescapable horizon.
after you left I couldn’t bear to go to
happy jack and follow the
road-you-can’t-see-until-you’re-on-it
and wind down to a beaver pond
with a boulder creating a cascade
of icy water current
to carry your dry fly downstream.
it’s just too hard now, to go where we were.
now I sit indoors with all the lights out
in front of a gas flame
and stare at the smokeless illusion
of man’s ability to control fire.