Skin by Robert VanderMolen

Author:Robert VanderMolen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

FRIENDS

Attentiveness is my best friend—

Being sober when he said it

Speaking low while our lines were out

Fishing deep in a slight chop

The only boat on a reservoir where there weren’t

Many trees—it was cool near the border

This was October, and I’d forgotten my fleece-lined

Windbreaker. The hills were prairie, the color

Of isolation. Distances were confusing. The day

Before he’d shown me boulders with carvings

By the Chips or the Sioux when they’d passed

Through on distant migrations…

Though I’d have preferred to discuss

The friends we’d known living in Seattle

Or nights outside with a bottle when our horizons

Had turned cloudy. I was also chilled…

I enjoy living alone, he continued, well, that is,

Me and my feline—a barn cat with face scars

that gobbled down walleye heads and innards—

It makes things simpler, like clear sky, glints of water…

Later we drove to the hot springs to bathe,

An oasis run by Native Americans near the end

Of a sparse road that not many seemed

To know about, cottonwoods and bleached boards

He had a girlfriend there. They also cooked our fish,

Which was the custom if you shared half your catch

They say Lewis & Clark passed through in 1805—

Somewhere there nestled another boulder

With their chiseled initials. Perhaps under water

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