Some with Shadows

A day of long-walked silences, 
waterless red gullies and hard-rock 
plateaus. We’ve met few on the trails 
this summer past my father’s dying. 
Now we drink slowly, 
clay of our tongues softening. 
I lean into a twist of dry cedar, 
strain to remember far-back stories 
of a creature losing its shadow, 
a native taboo against crossing another’s shade, 
of slippings between worlds. 

Once my father worked as a guide, horse-backing 
through the Hoback wilderness 
where he could tell which canyons 
would bring you to grief. 
His horse saved him twice 
from falls deeper than any return. 

When I stand, bones feel thin 
over hard ground, empty canteens and wrinkled maps
become too much to carry. 
Behind us the sun is setting over sandstone. 
Already a sliver-moon cools the sky 
like a wafer rim of ice, 

lunar sheen that could be said 
to be cold . . . 
or soothing: solace for the worn 
bewilderments of the living, a vanishing point
before we slip to the myth of dreams. 

All day, the only human things we touched 
were each other’s shadows, sizing themselves 
in chameleon significance. 
What looks like an owl in the darkening 
lands in a scrub pine, turns to bark.