Heidi Naylor

Let Me Explain: Highway 75
 
But, it was dusk
and twilight, with
bronze-tipped, wind-ripped fields
alpine hulsea, cheatgrass, sedum and goldenwood
 
so that’s what drew the eye
that, and the audible thrum of grace
lipstick edging the Sawtooth outline of Heyburn
like the glowing coal when you blow on a campfire
 
and, sure, I watched the road
curved and dark, heavy
an unwound strip of empty typewriter tape
absorbing the day’s thousand sun-washed stories
connecting
the gravel lane of lake with the hard left north at Eva Falls.
 
from nowhere came a thump;
and can a glimpse be searing?
for I did see, then, the young deer
small sweet deer
cartwheeling
off my front hood
delicate hooves tucked, and it bounced
once in the thickety meadow
settled in the fragrant musk of dogwood and arrowleaf
west of mile marker 178.
 
I slowed on a shoulder of gravel and chat
then stood in the hot wind
without a gun
without a husband
without a witness
as the engine ticked down
 
and a chickadee mourned
the unsparing
inevitable
conclusion.
 


Three Days at Girls Camp
 
We made time at the lake each afternoon
for some of the girls had never been camping
and fewer still boating in the chill and silk
of these mountain waters.
 
First day: kayaks, cheap floaties and blow-up tubes
a couple of sparkling new paddleboards.
Short forays with our generous motor boat couple
but mostly dipping in, splashing around Billy Rice beach, to
corral tadpoles, trap frogs & tiny fish, and is that a leech?
 
Second day: shivering lineups to try the rope swing
Splash and ka-johnnnng, the laughter is ringing
We keep an eye on kayaks and boards
zigging unsteady strokes, zagging a glittery sun path
beach sand absorbs the shouts, the lovely echoing voices.
 
Third day: vying for seats on the motorboat, to dive
from its tongue into dark satin folds of melted glacier.
Is that the blue kayak, that dot way out there?
Canyon shadows deepen: a low, velvet violet.
When, when might our paddleboarders return?
 
 

Heidi Naylor's features, fiction, and poems have appeared in the Washington Post, the Jewish Journal, New Letters, the Cimarron Review, Sunstone, Exponent II, and other magazines. She writes and teaches in Idaho. Find her at heidinaylor.net.