POEM

We were losing the ridgeline to the dusk
when you asked, “What if I had stayed?”

Ten years is nothing
to a mountain —

unless you clear-cut
and gut it
for someone else
to move in.

I’ve done that too many times —
made my heart a gorge with a river
everyone floats through.

I looked at you
and said, “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

And you stared at me
with eyes
that looked so tired
of trying
to rebuild a rockslide.

—  Clint Bowman