i remember you reaching for my hand as we crossed the tuolome river,

“it looks like we are standing on the back of a fish,” you said.

that july was as wild as a greenback cutthroat,

too endangered to keep, too vital to forget.

scales, snowmelt, and sandstone. 

our echoes descended canyon walls at 200 miles per hour

tending to lonely gorges below—

two peregrine’s in flight.

that summer was a million years in the making

like the memory of the colorado river.

my toes stretched out across the dashboard,

each little monolith of skin nudging a parched afternoon

each little thought pursuing a giant wind column across its plateau.

water, water, water

pulsating like the softest laughter

beneath our foreign fishing lines,

with a half moon, quieter than snow fields in the alpine tundra,

skinny dipping in its darkness.

 ~by trisha/sorrel

Greenback Cutthroat

see gallery for more Colorado trip photos!

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