Night Work Near Escalante

After dawn we hike through fine rain, 
but the light is good, only slight 
cellophane distortion as we look through 
at trees and stream, box canyon walls 
soft with shrubbery. 
Except for footfall, water 
is the only sound—the shhh 
of droplets on leaves, Calf Creek 
where it narrows over rock, 
widens and silks out. 

Stubs of tree trunks dot the shore, 
dark and old, then we notice fresh ones— 
still pale with the sap life of wood— 
move closer to the creek 
and find beaver stacks along the way: 
three pools below their dams 
before we reach the falls. 
We see no animals, 
but their lodges and tunnels underwater 
are a presence 
in a splendid privacy. 

A fresh-stripped tree lies across 
the trail, and the sound of its falling, 
the hidden waiting of beaver for a sense 
that all’s clear, their gnawing, 
seem only to have occurred 
in slow-motion silence— 
long before our coming and while we were 
near, ongoing, veiled 
beyond night. . .the utterance of the current 
in some past/future tense 
we try to render our own.