Rio Gorge
  By Michaela Kahn

Such lips the moon reaches
down to the desert. Down into
pocket red of gorge
sand, lichened unlikely green, the violetrust
edge.
The Rio dark coils
round a bear, a deer: rocks
that say things to you.

Whittle-stone, the lone
raven becomes two
ravens when snow spirals
thin through late-light
from clouds across the salt-brush
far mesa where
it left a long cold
channel in a cragged side.

You slip
a handful of ice
into my coat
pocket.
Our boots ring
rio, rio, on lava-stones.

In a coyote scat nest,
mat fur, feathers, chipped bone,
whiter near the edge.