I have thought how then they were a procession

of harvest, a reaping of dread from the clarified

peaks. Memory thins on mean rations of affection.

I loved only the blind dog, and can see his bones

cradled in the broken pelvis of the boy

and remember the last day, the long line of horses

on their knees and haunches, refusing the pass, how their blood

flecked the talus and the packers screamed

and beat their foreheads with the butts of whips,

how the men’s mouths filled with wind.

I heard the music. They jerked the reins

up and down the line.

They slashed at the hemp that bound the packs,

and the whistle burned straight

through the ravenous aspen.

I have become invisible

limping into town on fallen arches, carrying

the broken bone-handled knife by the blade. I loved

only the boy. His bones beneath a spruce,

scattered past their own formal memory: we were a boy. The boy,

the dog, the horse. I am invisible. The shoes of the tourists

make prosperous music on swept brick.

The old miners’ houses have been dressed like dandies,

turquoise and yellow.

In another life will I too be at these tables ordering coffee,

telling a story about October?

“the fireweed died back, the leaves thick at the edge of meadows,

I was riding a high trail, something off of Beckwith, you

all know it [nodding] but not this particular track, no one had

been on it in a long time, only blowdown, elk sign. It

thinned out in a park and I was lost, turned suddenly by the white

cry of a rib’s arch...”

The music is of salt and ice. It whistles above the clouds

hollow as a birdwing. Stray geese get lost up there,

it’s too high, their wings

sheer the chords, their wings come apart along

the leading edge and break. The music rains down,

is caught up by the branches and beaten

to brass, belled by the wind.

Nothing could have prepared him for the keening of a night

without birds, for the bled-out wash of wind,

the proximity of that ghostly music— the sight of winter

overcoming the valley, the fog of ice blurring the fir trees.

That morning the men hunched in slickers, silent. Rain

skiffed in long veils over the ridge and strafed

the fire, and the cocinero refused to cook, and the camp dog,

blind, curled just outside his memory of firelight.

Malvine stood. He called out the boy. “You cook.” The boy

froze. Malvine shrieked. He grabbed a fistful of the boy’s

black hair and drove his head down into the fire.

Two held him while another broke his limbs

with the oak bar of a pack saddle.

I am mute. I imagine the music falling on the sea

without further sound, salt to salt, falling like the delicate

carcasses of shrimp through shot rays of sunlight. They threw

the dog the boy’s liver. He must have known by the smell,

even the blood heat of his viscera because the dog cowered back

with a cry as if kicked, and snarled, and crawled forward

and ate, and one of the men shot him through the head.

They slaughtered the mare. Later the cook dragged

the boy to the tree, lay in his lap the carcass of the dog.

The coffee is strong. The small table wobbles on the brick.

Over the false fronts of gift stores hangs a broken

limestone ridge ragged with last Spring’s snow. I don’t belong

here. I can’t bear the evening sliding down the waterclear bowl

of sky, the music spilling from the open doors of restaurants.

The boy rode a blood bay behind the wagon. The dog followed her,

last in line, out of reach of the men’s spit. Boy, dog, horse.

I am invisible. I walk out of the mountains. It is summer. I

recognize no one. What I have seen rattles like seedpods.

What I hear is the fast faint whistling of a duck wing...

“...As they lay, I left them. Dragged some dead limbs out of the

trees, made a sort of cairn, piled the sticks above the wheat grass.

Getting cold, the sun was gone and I was frightened...”

by Peter Heller, from Malvine, an epic poem in 94 parts