for the dream of returning to winter’s river steaming 
shapes of spirits wading up the flooded bank where

seed-bursts of cow parsnip flatten under the risen current’s
weight, my face pressed to the window of a train-car 

hauling me downriver, almost Montana, my mother’s
birthplace, the emergence of winter and that waking-life 

river where, as a teenager, waiting to cross the suspension 
bridge, I once watched a man in the center arc of slats 

unzip a thermal lunch box and pour out ashes, those long 
filament threads spilling from a sandwich bag, unfurling 

over sudsy upwells boiling over, as if by some orographic
lift, from the inner green to the surface, the forced-down air 

breaching in random gasps, all while another man across 
the gorge drew his stringline up from the eddied dyestuff, 

verdigris, spawn-bellied, and my grandmother waited behind 
so she could cross alone, over to the blue-wick junipers

and rippled mudstone where all crossers pause to prepare
for their return, back across the pulsing slats, back to that 

suspended gait, where the palm’s terrain goes flat against the chest.

—Sam Olson

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