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Hell's Canyon
She thought we'd like a hundred-
dollar-a-day jet-boat ride
up Hell's Canyon, and we did,
even if it went by
fast, even if the wind flattened
any chance to talk it over until now,
her father and I uselessly grabbing
our wild hair, cylindrical pipes
of volcanic rock hulking
over us, she at the prow,
my nature-woman stepdaughter,
Pochantas-braid flopping
happily behind. Forty miles per hour,
we were screaming
"Oh look!" "Stupendous!"
and it is true, we really did
love the rocks, bare cliffs,
fierce Hackberry trees, the cut-throat
accretion of the Snake River.
We loved them like confession,
mountains hooded over us
like Cappucine monks,
shadows poured in crevasses.
We were sorry, believe me,
for our history of gas-guzzling
cars, bottles tossed,
and Chem-lawn. We didn't
trouble her with nearly all
the things we're sorry for.
She pointed out the condor
lifting off from a cliff, same
hooked beak that dropped
the worst sinners to the flood
of Cocytus. But then she fished
a bag of cherries
out of her back-pack,
and invented the spitting-the-pits
game. It was great to have
those sweet bursts
in the mouth, and the eye
of a water-sworl to aim at,
something we could handle,
with all that other overhead.
* * *
Deer
From my window, I watch
the deer flail down
into snow-nests by the creek.
They are thin and cold.
They stay about an hour,
then nose the air and move on
among the iron trees.
They pick up the shadow
of their flesh and enter
the rooms of my worry.
I have a dream
of a buried body. The body is
my fault, I have to keep watch,
to keep someone from
discovering the awful truth.
Sometimes it is a Bosnian
child. Sometimes when I look,
it is a tangle of naked bodies
thrown in a pit, and I don't
know which country I'm in.
Sometimes it is only
the water, dangerously
bulging as it did last month,
leaving a scaffolding
of trees across the creek.
The deer feed on the briars
of last resort, while I watch
from my room. They remain
within their own keeping,
along the gully of the creek.
They ask nothing of me.
And sometimes, I spot
the steam of their nostrils,
even from here.
The grieflessness of deer
enters me, then, and I am
not afraid, for once.
Fleda Brown (Click for bio.)