Our country uncle
has an old hunter’s tricky eyes.
He leads us
under a rotting log bridge
into the riverbed
to spot rabbits
hidden behind
dangling tree roots.
I breathe the air
in the channel’s flow,
my lungs calm and controlled
as the rabbits we have come to kill.
Our boots crunch stones and mulch
as we step the river’s course.
Beyond the second curve
we file up a ravine
that rises and lopes through cottonwoods
onto the prairie.
Just before I reach the ridge
the memory of another river
holds me back,
its name and place and time unrecorded
except for my silt blown eyes and whirling hair,
my body tumbling its murky passage,
me waking in the wet dark
from that nightmare of my own drowning.