Boots Off the Trail
for the Bell Tower girls, search of summer 1984
My boots bore me summer-long searching
up Iron Mountain and down North-South
Road. I stopped at turn-outs and logging decks,
let my dog out of the car to check old fire pits,
hiked the dust of rutted skid trails. No sign
of you. I didn’t find you at Stonebreaker
Creek where foxglove and columbine nod
their secrets of green in the shade of running
water. You weren’t among the boulders
at Capps Crossing, or down Dogtown Creek.
No trace of you at Henrys Diggins, or the trail
to Blue Gouge Mine. My dog showed me
stubbed-out cigarette butts and rusting cans.
In June above Fleming Meadow, I felt a shiver
of breeze like ghost-breath, as if you might
have passed there. My boots never asked
where we were going. They just put one foot
in front of the other as my dog and I
checked off blanks of stillness on the map.
~ Taylor Graham
from Windows of Time and Place: Poems of El Dorado County (www.coldriverpress.org)
