Scattered Risks
for Max Uschuk
Climbing sandstone’s blonde shoulders
above the whitewater trance of the Animas,
my dog dances the irregular lip
where talus chips like millions of arrowheads
lacerating time into an avalanche of scattered risks.
Wind bullets my chest when Lu Lu leans
into my six year old nephew kicking
thin blue air as he dangles
his legs daring the slender edge.
I call him back before his daydreams drop
through the backs of ravens
charting the river’s hunger.
Why does vertigo sting me most
when others rock close to the brink, not
when it’s me whose loose footing
I’ve never quite believed could hold?
My stomach implodes to ulcers
while I pray for my husband craning out
to take wide angle aerial photos of Durango
and our house in the spinning valley
a thousand feet below.
While my family teases oblivion’s horizons, I imagine
the full range of terrorized flight
into screaming air,
legs acetylene, feet flailing, eyes
signing regret and hopelessness
before the fatal crash against rock,
rock, rock, the cold splash
if bodies broken by the thrashing current
that carves Gateway Park.
Tracing the crazy path my family blazes
scaling crumbling stone above a river that refuses to learn
the many human names for misfortune, I know
there is no way to save them.
Below the cliffs, kayaks bright as stained glass
or toy bumper cars bash against boulders
braced against whitewater’s appetite.
What do I have to lose, except the way
sunset frames those I love, holding their shapes?
