Snake River Blues

                    for Chris

Anyone trying to jump
that chasm on anything

but Icarus wings
should have died right then

let alone hereafter. I
think sometimes about the kitten

you heard in the sage
wanted to take home, no

matter what.
And I, sensibly,

said no. Said it
emphatically, so emphatically

the other pilgrims on the bridge
took your side as I routinely

oblivious marveled at the sight
of a golf course

on a spit of land
Way Down There.

Kitten no doubt dead by now too
let alone hereafter.

Dead like the marriage
of the friends we’d just

left somewhere back in
Idaho, dead like

that old Evel, who turns
out to be mighty dead

tonite, just now. So It Goes.
In the next life

I hope to see you again
even if as grievous angel &

that kitten as scorpion,
but high lifted high

high in her constellation, &
our friends in the scabbard

of The Hunter’s sheath, nebula
burning desiring something that

can’t be quantified
contained and in certain

religious traditions
even spoken of.

All that Said.
I love you.

Someday, maybe
baby, another cat from a universe

other than mine
will whisper

in yr skeptical ear
and tell you it’s true.