04 Oct Back 40

Wilderness
In all this American
marital wasteland
we could
have lost everything.
I’m so thankful we didn’t
end up dying
without having found
each other, without striving
to know one another

more generously, not unlike
scaling the face of the Beartooths
where beyond the last grip
of roots and shale
wolverines lip the far ridge
and disappear into no man’s land.
Here we go hand over fist
until we stand
and look down on Sylvan Lake

and her tail stream,
blue echo of the day
sky, of eye, of storm,
bones of an eagle

on the upslant at our feet, wing flare
of longer and shorter bones
like narrow white stones we hold
in our hands and set back one at a time
in their form, carpometacarpus, radius,

and ulna, hand bones
and wing bones,
spine, skull
and uplift of desire, primary flight
feathers of predator birds
over the Great Divide
from the northern channel of Canada
to their home in Montana.
At dawn

we find ourselves again
in our tent on the skirt
of Sylvan, light in the bowl
of the earth, and light
on the points
of your shoulders and hips,
elbows, arms and wrists,
the auburn of your eyes,
jaw and body rise.