The temperature prepares to depart the station
But hangs instead in canyon air
Akin to nothing.

Fields of hay and stacked rocks make
These simple landscapes a contrivance.
As one peers through mountain glint
Of disembodied ranges,
Doubling back on memory masked,
Thoughts one wanted returned
In a voice no longer heard.

Each day that song
Down country lanes play
Beyond freshly painted paddocks,
Footbridge and pond.
Its bent notes shade
Into black earth
An evening volley of air.
41st and Ogallala. Boulder County.

These canyons came up quickly
During the Laramide orogeny

The debts of Fall weigh down the mountains
With broken leaves and desperate moss,
A silhouette skin of Winter’s harvest.

Still,
The cows do not know
How seasons pass before you without much bother
Capturing certain days wholly
Letting others escape entirely.

In Spring,
exiled ghosts appear,
To hunt down their infrequent presence,
To capture grass through spectral fingers
And dust the glass upon the skin
They speak in infinite, earthen memories
With willing boots listening
And walking beside you.