from the mountain pass horse thieves

drove herds through to graze

at the headwaters of the Minam—

a cloudy violet quartz

polished by a river the cobble is

the sole evidence of, the time before

people fell into this world,

and that mountain ridge

lay at the western shore of a continent.

Climbing there again today,

we followed a set of wolf tracks

in the snow above Squaw Creek,

brooded on broken forests and what

if anything, those trees remembered of her—

whose name, what tribe, which languages,

how many Julys gathered in her,

and how long ago?—before violence

befell her and maps slurred

another woman and the place she lived.

The air so still in their battered stubs

we could guess which few

ponderosas and firs alive now

were young then, the creek resounding

in their creviced bark—the lyric

water sings even now in the cold,

splashing over every cobble in its bed

the same for us as for her. The mountain

gleamed, the sun warmed our backs

and we shared our meal in the meadow.

After so many years, that cobble

seemed to glow in its room

tonight among the orchids, a message

passed along tangled networks

branching to their thinnest mesh.