I remember drowsiness, the cloudy heat,

the familiar mixed smells of our sweat, even

the pressure of my cheekbone against the front seat

and the sense of promptly forgetting a thing

you had just taught me. Suddenly

after hours of talk and dust and ragged plain

we reached the Missouri’s thick, unadorned curve:

rush of water looking muscular from above

and denser than the land there, which seemed

translucent for its lack of color,

as if the swallows plunging toward the cliff

might pass through it.

We sped on, but shining for a second below,

rising from the current where the bank had once been,

the tops of trees were stripped and whitening.

More trees would appear in time

to line the river’s new edge, but what we glimpsed

had the gorgeous starkness of a place forsaken,

as if our view of it together would be the last.