by Jim Papworth
The Muldoon Creek Road bounces us
across its knuckles
as we intrude;
it wants to jar our memories.
Clouds like dingy sheep
drizzle their holdings
into August,
spraying the land with contempt.
A herd of mosquitoes chokes the air,
ricochets its whine
off quaking asp,
searches the poke of skin.
The copper mine on Whitney Butte
closed-ochre tailings
rattle the hills
with whisperings of clutched ore .
Sage coughs its musk into summer
and stains the basin gray;
roots crawl below,
hoarding the valley’s meagerness.
Like a hungry cat in winter
the land clamps dead calves in stingy jaws-
next year’s teeth , bones, and bits of fur.
Willowwalls guard native brookies,
whose variegated bodies
feed streams
with translucent fear in shadows.