In the Arkansas River Valley
POETRY
by J. R. Forman
yesterday I heard a group of boys
chart a course to find the river’s end
voyaging into the northern country
through the flatlands westward up the Rockies
they thought like us no one had ever found
that weeping mountain face before—I could
not bring myself to say the wilderness
is only what they see between themselves
and the horizon—do you wish that some
old man had told us that? I can’t imagine
you at middle age like me—the rainfall
patters on the waves—I ask the winds
if you’ve arrived or if the days have also
beaten you back like water weathers stone
J. R. Forman holds a lectureship at Tarleton State University. His poetry and translations have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, The Wax Paper, West Branch, AzonaL, Evening Street, Signal Mountain, Agave, Perceptions, Brief Wilderness, Talking River, SLAB, Glint, Matter, Press Pause, Visitant, The Round, Streetlight, Better Than Starbucks, Stirring, Borderlands, and anthologies by Clemson University Press. An Appalachia native, he lives on the staked plains of Texas.
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