still, the west
a month before town is
swallowed in slow
business the river swells to
the cottonwoods a woman
says don’t come
home too late
still, the west
every iteration of blue missing in
the solemn weather a house
fire erases into prairie sky
still, the west
alpine gusts out of
the south over Mummy Pass
we keep nailing tin
to the roof
late runoff
time beneath the Lyon’s Sandstone
bringing cottonwood to sprig
and my ear to the eddies
men pass in trucks
cast spinners in the holding lake
I hold a cigarette in my teeth
the way you do a floodplain
meadow in your eye
words for it in your throat
the blackbirds croak each
day as the river rises
David Mucklow was born and raised north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He has an MFA from Colorado State University, and his work has been published in wildness, Weekly Gramma, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere.