THE BUTTE–Rodney Nelson

THE BUTTE–Rodney Nelson

the time I saw Rainy Butte might not
have been the only

the blue more mass

than height hefting up out of the plain
was too familiar

the sense of

her hand in mine too well remembered
and the very morning

in the sun

we shared an ache without a word to
have that land

even though it happened

to be raining now

even though she

and I had never been and if I
imagined coming in uniform

a mounted hoplite of one day or

in an earlier
dropping flint bits
at the top

I still would not put quite

the right human figure to my love
of the nonhuman vast

and the time

I saw Rainy Butte was the only