Long after the flesh had vanished
a sheepherder found it at Deep Creek.
It belonged to one of the Chinese miners
massacred for gold in Hells Canyon.
A bullet had blown a whole section
away, but this did not discourage
the sheepherder from turning it
into a sugar bowl. The sort
of relic one might find
in a collectibles store or the dusty,
web-framed attic of an eccentric
who died of cumulative failure.
Was it you, Chea Po, who contained
this sweetness? Held its promise?
I like to think you weren’t one
of the bodies washed up downstream
after weeks in the river.
That you remained on a gravel bar
where you’d panned for flakes,
watched by wary bighorns. It is important
for me—a stranger writing over a century
after the murders—to imagine you there.
More than artifact the morning light reveals.
For whom water speaks a lost language.
