Wilderness

"Backwater"









I used to think backwater meant
remote or backward, out of date,
a place of stagnant poverty.
But found the term in history meant
across the mountain watershed
where rivers run the other way
to west, to wilderness, to where
the future waits to open out
its shining promise, destiny.
Backwater meant new water then,
where greatness waited tilted toward
the sunset rivers of hope where
the worst of us, the very worst
of all, might find a seventh chance.

by: Robert Morgan

Akine to

"Primitive Road"

Say you love the albums with the smoky riffs
and downbeat rhythms. Here, they beg, fall in with us.
Forget that book, have a whiskey... have another.

Say you love the books, the words
and the silences between words-
faded yellow dashed on a disused highway.

Say you love the fields, the black of midnight,
coyotes' yipped prayers, and
their raw thirst for hens.

Say you love the raw salt of powder
when its ghost rises from the rifle's breech
and settles, sweet with lead, in your lungs.

Then breath what's left back to the world-
speak the coyote's tongue, sweat nitro
from your blood, say you love what you've become.

by: Lucas Howell