Ten thousand years tip forward, fall into our loose valley, sleeve filled with tumbled cobble, draping this thin-armed stream. In the hills tree voles nibble acrid needles down to their bitter resin ducts. Startled deer spring upright from brambles. This land less for predators than prey, more eyes below than stars. Once a tangled country with ample room to hide, now the great old fish are dead.
Old photos show skinny children wrestling blackmouth from the creek.
They drag them home. Lame dogs peer from their eyes. Final, brooding fish collapse from pilgrimage. They are huge trees and here in shades of stain and tan we are invisibly shaken by horsetails that drive up insolent and green through the archives of our short memory.