Those Years Gone

Beyond Harlowton, on flat prairie flecked with sage
and ryegrass, the nightsky became so pregnant with stars
it sagged and touched the horizons.
We shivered, stripping our clothes on the weathered stones
humped along the shore of a lake I remember only as deep,
cool, and naked as ourselves.
Wind carried wheatsmell down from Canada.
Stickwillow chattered in dry arroyo.
We dove, swam.
Your last girlfriend had married.
Cityboy.
I watched you tread black water, look up,
wondering how that sky so fat with stars
could lack, so utterly, warmth.
And how that wind followed us to the car.
We were wet, transparent, without hope.
Back at the lake I heard waves piling up against clay banks.
A distant coyote howled out in a language
only the endangered understand.
You understood.

--Mitchell Hegman