Gabriel Furshong

Hundred-Year Flood

for Lauren

Before we agreed to stay until one dies first
we walked on a crust of frozen snow

where the Teton River long ago 
filled the lungs of cattle 
swallowed homes built to raise children

where limber pine 
wind-whipped like migrants
bent across a blue dark plain

Each day now further away 
but a feeling persists
of being recollected with you
by other lives that always listen

They hear us walking 
to the high-water mark and down 
across bottomlands at dusk

the cutbank sheer
a river running clear below

Back to Issue XI…