The West Fork

Time selects the fittest dreams,
who roosts where, and injects geometry:
mountain hulks erode to alabaster
skulls of deer, conifer
roots, and tracks of bear
in riverbed bottoms spelled
by pools of zodiac gleam.

Across these cordoned latitudes,
cataracts and vagrants learn to follow
routes the circulars delineate.
Foragers have come to terms
with agents of the minute hand.
Trees grasp banks and slant like dials
to chosen angles of the moon.

The Dosewallips zags and cuts
arteries of what has been, races and falls
like seconds thumbing through the mind.
Teeth and claws, fewer and fewer bear
haul excess baggage through drainages
where ragged firs endure.
The currents of their hearts are still at large.