The Banks of the Far Missouri


While you grappled with budgets
balancing numbers, battling bureaucratic banality
Thumbing through ledgers in a stifling room
Did you look out to the river
placid, seemingly endless
But not to you...
You had traced the path of the water
to its rocky root
stood astride and drank of it
Those days of pain, fear, awe, mystery, transcendence
Marked the crest of your life's wave
Boon companions, grace of savage tribes
Rustle of abalone shells, shrill of eagle whistle
Meat roasted like a sacrifice
in the sacred circle
All this lay across the shining mountains and years away
The long path twisted back on itself at last
leaving your body wounded in the dust of Tennessee
freeing your soul at last
to haunt the banks of the far Missouri