I Go Out and Bring In Bones

Everyone does, no one questions it:
thin white walls of skull, hip’s thick
whorl. Grass cracks
beneath my steps,

I say it sounds like bones. See,
I name things to know
I matter: Dust
Creek, Bone Hollow. The wind I call

Unforgiving. You are the wind
that pulls the smell of rot from each
bleached canyon.
You are the beautiful, skulking

sun: I see you rise and rise
and disappear. Wait.
I’m sorry. I know what you must think
but this is trying to be about dry grass

and love. See, I call it Beauty
of Bones under a Season’s Hard Sun.

The Other River

I hold the river in my cupped hands.
Your dark bird lands on the arm of a cottonwood.

The water has gone black around the stumps,
track of a crow in yesterday’s footprint.

I hold the river in my cupped hands.

Mostly, there is just mud and wind.
And the iron bones of the bridge are useless.

Your dark bird lands on the arm of a cottonwood.

Dry belly of the river studded with rocks and stumps,

and that scatter of slender bones.

I hold the river in my cupped hands.

Now a ton of river dust rises in the wind,
but on your back, like a bird’s, it weighs nothing.

Your dark bird lands on the arm of a cottonwood.
I hold the river in my cupped hands.