 Not April
In truth, March is the crueler month,
time of winter’s last cold lashings,
final bone cold mornings like straws
on a camel’s hump. Warm days taunt
with meltwater rivulet song
and icicle trinkling, before
they’re locked again in hoary sheets. If perhaps in some long March thaw
a few shoots break the sandy loam,
points of green stabbing at the sun,
these, too, will be cut from within,
their cells skewed and pierced with crystal.
All the Pretty Moths
Above the mud, where irrigation stalled in the bay,
in the miniature marsh, orange moths, moths of yellow
custard, old turquoise moths, ferrous green, tipped
and sought their balance like foals, or sod rolls
stacked crookedly on pallets just set down. And the moon that bulks now at midnight so large
(what porch-light would be if it could be giant)
must have been making its way into this image
you called such a beautiful night and, by your lonesome,
took a walk along the back road in.
 Rites
By Cameron Scott - In the cold spring dusk, leaks in our waders
remind us of last season. Water from stripping
in line numbs our fingers. There is no mystery
in wanting to wake up each day
believing water will safely carry us away
when it won’t. Every atom of us
under the right circumstances is infallible
or fatigable. You cannot remove your own bones
from your body and so the scaffolding remains.
If it is dirty clean it out. If it is broken repair it.
To Zoe the Border Collie
She forgave me, I hope, For never finding the time to learn To talk to her through my eyes. And pontificating about her limits For the lack of vocal cords, Opposable thumbs, et cetera, and All the while she’s standing there, Her eloquent eyes exposing my limits. That’s not all she forgave: I couldn’t match the unconditional Commitment she brought to our life Together, her bottomless capacity for Forgiving our slights — forgetting To let her in, to let her out, to feed her, To meet her eye, to hear what she wanted To give us through those great brown eyes.
 Backcountry
Meyers, California - I follow your tracks up the mountain’s spine, watch the strain of tendons in your neck. We mark a path through red fir and lodgepole pine. At the top, we adjust ski poles, check the avalanche beacons, sure to set them search to find. You give me first tracks — proving your generosity. Before I take the turn, you ask what I have been thinking.
I Would Much Rather Talk to My Dog
By Dave Koop - I would much rather talk to my dog. I consider it time that's well spent. I don't have to ask "Dear, May I please bend your ear?" For my dog's ears are already bent. I would much rather talk to my dog. I'll let him decide reason and rhyme. He makes listening an art, And I know that he's smart: He agrees with me most of the time.
 A Strange Occurrence on Mount Zirkel
By Richard F. Fleck - As close to Wyoming as could be,
I rambled through the Park Range
forests at the base of Mount Zirkel
and began to climb some rocky ledges
until the pines began to thin and I paused
to stare into the limitless rolling plains of
the big North Park fringed with snowy
Never Summer peaks to the cloudy east.
 Hagues Peak - A Case of Altitude Sickness
By Richard F. Fleck - Only twice in fifty years have I come down
with altitude sickness, once in the Wind Rivers
and once here on the flanks of Hagues Peak
A bit after we peered far down to Crystal Lake
and a little before our final scramble
up the last three hundred feet. Perhaps I hadn’t
eaten quite enough at breakfast or perhaps it
was coming across a dead Clark’s Nutcracker
flat on a rock, but my head began to pound ...
 A Snowy Night in Northern Montana
By Richard F. Fleck - On a very snowy night camped at MacDonald Lake,
we shiver in our sagging tent as winds snap aspen
branches overhead and we wonder just why we chose
early June and not July to camp in Glacier Park where
early summer is nothing more than a late-winter.
 Three Front Range Haiku
By Richard F. Fleck - Twin Sisters - Through golden aspen
We climb to top to see high
Gray block of Longs Peak.
Squaw Peak -
Winding past lodgepoles,
We quickly ascend loose slabs
To summit in space. Devil’s Head -
We slip on dark ice
In slanting woods until steps
Take us up highest ridge.
 Break Up Mountain
The mountain wasn’t called
Break Neck Ridge for nothing,
But I assumed as a warning
of what could possibly happen
if you let yourself become
distracted. ‘You’re not being
very talkative,’ my girlfriend said.
‘I’m concentrating,’ I said. ‘I’m
trying not to break my neck.’
 View from Togwotee Pass
By Richard F. Fleck - There
you stand
and stare but your
mind cannot even start
to decipher what raw vision
reveals. Huge slabs of granite
protrude like fingers poking the sky
through layers of snow so high in space,
so high above the sagebrush and glacial kettle holes
and larger blue lakes sparkling in sun reflecting upside-
down images giving your mind twice as much to absorb.
 Snowy Range Sundown
By Richard F. Fleck - Nothing better than to be
Walking a trail above the trees
And looking out across the way
To distant mountains and other
Northern snow-patched peaks
At the end of the day
When an orange-gold sun
Sinks beneath the tundra
 Legal
This morning the truck
pulls away from the cities
before dawn, and the girls ungreening
in their beds. Away from Thunderbird
fortified wine and wars which have not yet
found your body. With Dad and Mama in the cab
and you and brother lying splendid
as royal corpses in the bed, wilderness
brings itself to you and there is a buck
Day in the Desert When You Were Gone
There was one Red bird. Bright
and soft. Loud red like a train.
Rain without clouds that came to lift color out of rock.
Green algae,
startled, that flung thick coats of itself to the surface. Prayer.
At night,
Purple.
Occlusion. Things hidden and lost
by morning, a catalogue of spines and husks.
The old rust bodies of the scorpions.
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