In my town is one canyon free of planed wood,
where no dogs bark, nor cars come home at night.
This canyon–a deep crease between shale,
dim in summer, dark by winter morn–
lies in timber and meadow ignorant of human tools.
On a late autumn wind I walk past milky snowberries
plumping for winter grouse,
timothy still tall in straw yellow,
ponderosa seasonless in green.
Cedar waxwings bloom across paraffin sky.
Sixpoint elk lean hard;
uphill legs made for plains climb cliffed rocks.
There, impaled between dried thistle
lingering in faint purple;
there, under larch
frozen orange in needle death;
there, waiting for the bulldozer of spring
squats a tombstone:
red flag of conquest waving feebly
on a survey stake.

-Karen Walker Ryan
Originally published in Western Wildlands, fall 1981