Jeffrey C. Alfier
Downriver, After the Stations of the Cross

My woman and I have rowed far south
on the Pecos, the day stretched clean
and bright. Sand bars reach up
through a green murk to scrape our canoe.
As I work my oar, she traces the land’s rise
up a steep escarpment. Beyond sight,
an animal’s dying screech pitches high.
I know the final puma was killed on these banks
early last century, but still I grow alert.
She is alert as well, raises her camera in hope
of sighting red-shouldered hawks soaring
over persimmon, a wild light within her.

Like some disciple scattered in grief
at the crucifixion, I need these fugitive hours.
I’m first among doubters, a Thomas
who’d have filled the spear wound
with my fist, felt its edges, disjunct and raveled
like desert riverbanks. I don’t possess
her depth of faith. It is enough for me
that we drift on the current, prove nothing
beyond this water that releases us for a time
from consequence. In this light, we thread
the sheer expanse that spreads away
from us, our progress a slow drawl,
our presence nothing more than a drowse
on the world, supplicants of limestone,
gravel and river, all the wearied beauty
we touch together now. This obedience
to stillness. This present mercy.

_ _

Jeffrey C. Alfier is the author of The Wolf Yearling (Silver Birch Press) and Idyll for a Vanishing River (Glass Lyre Press). In 2013, he was a finalist in the Press 53 Poetry Contest, and short-listed for the Fermoy International Poetry Festival, Ireland. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Louisville Review and Arkansas Review. 

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