Skull Bluff

Weary of whys, we named you.

Gray granite mask, spruce-cowled,

cavern eyes intent on

blue monotony, wearing a chert-pale

scar where only last week

cliffs hung, the downgorge timbers

a talus of matchsticks, the road

buried—whether oracle or

god-monolith, human hunger

as much as the whitewater roar

beneath you, fashioned you.

A universal need

to ascribe hate to what shifts

our standpoint’s necessary

furnishings, the bitter chaff

of fact patching a breached

belief, assumes its local

name: Skull Bluff.