British Columbia Pastoral

 
September: almost snow.
White sheets across
the sky, the fields. How strange
 
the frost, feral over desert
hills. Sage brush
caught in the cattle’s
 
teeth. The river cuts
a swath where I am
trying to tell you about grass
 
that presses up through
the ground without urging.
About merciless suns
 
taking our eyes. You shield
your mouth as I speak.
The wars I won’t admit
 
like dying daisies, their corpses
linting the grass. In summer,
we swam in the Thompson
 
River. In feral heat. Baptized
new again. The kites
of our bodies cutting
 
a swath through green
water. But as water rises
in spring, it will take you
 
with it. With thawed glaciers
& snow. With bones
we can’t make smaller
 
once grown. Dead trees
claw at rocks on the river-
bottom, swollen belly
 
of a…