--June 1861--

"The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild."
          --Henry David Thoreau

Swallows and kingfishers intrude upon the air
with cries like the birds of Concord.
He studies these oracles. The crazy crooked

river, the broad bluffs and hills, sandy banks.
It's impossible not to say he is dying.
Or ignore the cough, the chill he had almost

forgotten, botanizing, walking in a strand of oaks.
Sunlight on dry grass and his shadow returns
to earth. Set loose like an air-borne seed.

His mind blank as the prairie sky. He stands
on the boat deck and plucks blossoms from vines
that overhang the water. Labels this

unexpected harvest. Each leaf, its color,
its texture against his fingers.
Is nature so easily tamed? The river so navigable,

when snags, the muddy-looking water tricks the captain,
forces them onto shoals? The journey out
to Fort Peck a meandering, never a straight path

their boat can hope to take. His chest eases,
lungs open like a heron's wings lifted
over the water, rippling the surface

with its reflection and his own.
Tired, he breathes the air's watery enchantment,
a temporary refuge. His words turning nature to fable,

the raw material of tropes and symbols
to describe a life. In the midst of this clarity
and brightness, the day itself is a great phenomenon.

They land at Fort Peck. The prairie a richness
of colors, of the Sioux dancers, their costumes,
their drums and flutes, the dignitaries'

flowery speeches, gambling tents lit up after dark--
these colors prolonged into a splendid sunset,
its mother-o'-pearl hints, grayish silver, a pale

robin's-egg sky fading to black. The kind of sky
where things appear. Stars, a whippoorwill,
the ghost figures of buffaloes and trees.

Blood on his handkerchief. He's reduced
to rasping, coughing so he can't sleep.
Can't write more than a listing of plants

he knew from before and those he discovers here--
azure larkspur, the wild crab apple, the purple clove.
He catches himself complaining

like a tree against a winter sky.
His sense of disappointment. The boat
a yellow square against the darkness.