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Arch Alfred McKillen
We ride to Echo Canyon,
He rides with me tonight,
No moon above to guide us,
The stars alone are bright.
The wind is in the sagebrush;
Somewhere a coyote calls;
The studded sky is briefly lit
As a flaming starlet falls.
We draw the rein together,
He trembles as I pass
To turn the horses free to graze
In the wild September grass.
And now I stretch beside him
Where he lies upon the ground,
And in all this lovely wilderness
We two alone are found.
When they returned from building the kay-dam
(of logs and drift pins, to make again
a place where salmon might yet spawn)
they divvied up: each hauled a pack frame
loaded with tools and sundries, twice down
the canyon to its end, then up the old fire trails
a mile and a half, ducking vine maples
all the way, to the parked trucks. A third trip
for each would end the business,
but night came on, as it generally does;
they might have come back another day, but
as the moon was full, down they went.
One folded and refolded the old tent
and packed it away, while the others sat,
taking down the old sheepherder stove,
dumping ashes, talking. She would walk ahead,
The stone-pine with green branches
Stands on the brink of the canyon,
The wind whispers in the tree —
The wind lifts my hair.
Water runs with a pattern of braided and woven music
Through the stream in the canyon —
My body flows like water through the stream in the canyon.
The tired wind creeps down the canyon
At nightfall.
By day it turns and flings itself
Against the granite face of the mountains.