ROBYN THOMAS

Ktunaxa Hoodoos

The river cuts 
its meat from the sky. 
“Step back!” we say, in hard-packed snow 
below the pines, where bats roost, 
slipping under synthetic bark. 

Wolf moss is named for the animal it kills. 
Deer stuffed with webs of vulpinic lime, 
luring death. 

On the sinking Hoodoos 
she said, 
“It’s okay if I go.” 

Cheeky blue flash
skirting the ledge
where trees are pulled to their doom. 
In nine generations 
of muskrats, bear, lynx,
or the quickened inhalation of a hare, 
before snow prints collapse. 
Whispers, beneath tired elk. 

Swallows in their sand caves
carefully tune out the river’s insatiate belly.
Not a bite of ash will be taken from us, no, no, 

not an inch 
of this earth will fall. 

She peeks over, willing--
a swift gust beneath raven’s wing; a surprise.  

Were the trees startled? 
Slumped, broken, brittle, 
roots screaming for plunging ground.

Below fog-gulped mountains,

the river eats.