At the dying cottonwood with a bleached-out
rag, an inner tube hanging from a limb, I pulled
off the gravel, desperate for a friend, following
the empty creek curving back and forth through
steeper hills under dry mountains. By the sand
stream grew greenery, real bushes whose roots
drank groundwater and lived off more than light
snow and desert rain. I rounded the second bend
and the branches leaned over toward the hillside,
buckeye and long leafy willow boughs smelling
of menthol brushing the car. Now the pot-holed
stony dirt was the creek where spring snowmelt
overflowed the bank. Something brown darted
in a blur through low shade as a grouse whirred
up, flashing pale underwings. I kept cranking
the wheel, dodging deep hollows, three times
tensed and hearing the Caddie scrape bottom
so I worried I’d torn the pan. I craned my neck,
squinting at a cliff, blue rock sheets like smooth
jade flashing in the sun, agate Indians carved to
suns and moons. The road leveled, a tight arroyo
opened in range again but better feed, 1,000
feet higher. The running creek and aspen veered
north across the narrow valley to Jeffrey pines
standing on ridges angled vertical. I’d driven
20 miles off the interstate, thirsty and worried
there were two cottonwoods, a kid or joker
had switched the rag and I’d turned too quick.
Failed streams crisscrossed the broken land,
same country spread for 10,000 acres and then
the way made the long swing at the soft-looking
bluff I’d climbed eagerly as a boy for chipped
obsidian arrowheads and below all emerald and
summer lush from the underground river waited
the place I’d known before the trouble started,
whiskey and fame, lust but no love, and I forgot
I was Travis Jackson and the ranch was home.
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Montreal Review, and other journals, and stories were nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2010 and 2012. Poems have appeared in Poetry Porch, Atticus Review, Red Booth Review, Meadowlands Review, Emerge Literary Review, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, and other magazines, and are in press at Oklahoma Review, Paradise Review, Hoot & Hare Review, Citron Review, and Poetry Porch.