I walk on water, take the river
from its high Uintas
down Utah’s cascades,
wander Wyoming’s meanders,
Montpelier’s meadows,
to Soda’s hair-pin curve
where thirty-thousand years ago
lava turned the Bear
away from Blackfoot’s Snake
and sent it down to Grace.

Doubling back from Gem Valley
to Cache, I walk the river’s cobbled bed
where tributaries surge, rowdy Cub,
Little Bear, Beaver-headed Logan,
six-tined fork of Blacksmith.

Down the length of floodplains
I pass, through wetlands
of cattails and bulrushes,
to bottomlands leveled and drained,

where the river silts in, slows down,
its honeyed pace tamed for grain.

On the river’s gliding current
I travel miles each step,
a dreamlike passage
through cedar and cottonwood,
hawthorn and chokecherry,
lifting like a heron over dams
and sluggish lakes
that halt the river’s breath.

I walk the Bear all summer
as it builds strength again,
widens into marshes, joins
in lush bird-heavy congress
with the great peculiar Salt,
a lake that would surely die
if not for this river, this path,
this milk and honey.

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