Adolescent summers, seeking solace, I rode
from Reno into Sierra foothills. My horse the yellow
of a dried sage flower. The air, bright,
seared the mind of everything but desire
for cool, for up. A gallop of gaining and getting over
the steep, odd-shaped, sage-covered hill in hope of finding—
what? a glacier-fed meadow—but discovering
again and again, more sagebrush there.
Still more dry scrub rose beyond the end
of the rutted dirt road. No piñon or ponderosa,
no stitch of shade to stop the sage
from giving up all its fragrance
every damn dawn.
I left Reno seeking green, seeking distance,
applying a wet haze to memory—anything to mediate
that hard, hot light.
Decades later, I buried
my sage-yellow horse in a rain-fed meadow.
I sprinted to midlife in an odd-shaped climb
of mothering and getting over his loss.
Whatever narrative there is, isn’t enough.
Memory births and rebirths to exhaustion
the salt-scent of his sweat after a gallop.
Give my mind a story to scramble up
so it won’t tear at my heart.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 6.
Jennifer Bullis grew up in Reno, earned a Ph.D. in English at UC Davis, and taught college writing and literature in Bellingham, Washington, for fourteen years. Her first collection of poems, Impossible Lessons, was published by MoonPath Press in 2013.
See all items about Jennifer Bullis
