Sunrise crests the southern peaks,

strikes the white hut high on the hill,

casts shadows along a railroad spur.

Winter rode in on a boxcar last night, 

spent the new moon’s savings in a

ghostly brothel. All night, wind ran

cold hands up the valley’s things,

bristling with newly naked aspen and

pines that know not the beetle hordes.

An old man with smoldering beard and

eyes of grey glass cries outside the Victoria

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

but he’s more Lear than Scottish thane, 

banished as he is to a mountain moor

far from daughters loyal or treacherous.

A brewpub inhabits the old mortuary,

customers soaking up suds instead of

embalming fluid. Every alley you skirt

harbors defrocked Klansmen who

scurry into dilapidated shacks or dive

into dumpsters, mumbling of nooses, 

shotgun blasts and crucifix ash.

The Arkansas flows wild silver between

hot yellow cottonwoods, a river anticipating

canyon curves but regretting, like all

pure water, flowing closer to the Springs.

Look west toward Monarch Pass and see

in the flats green fumes rising from a

herd of porcine developers who dream of

bedrock, valleyview, alpineglow over

identical subdivisions, followed by the usual

quick getaway. You wish to be a trout

swimming upstream and even as you

whisper those words you wake

in clear shallows, current strong

through your gills, jeweled beams

lighting your flanks. Autumn is over

and you know in your fine bones you must

swim and swim and never stop.

_{Ransick, Chris: Asleep Beneath the Hill of Dreams, Ghost Road Press, Denver, 2010: 81.}