Across the river
clouds conceal the mesa.
White billows tether each juniper,
tangle in the rippling edges of oak leaves,
snag on a pine tree’s branches,
spiral around its trunk.
Of yesterday’s sea
only fossils remain, sounding treetops.
There can be no second thoughts.

-Linda Hasselstrom, “This World, and the Last,” Dakota Bones The Collected Poems of Linda Hasselstrom (1993)