Buffalo River

By Mary Sauer

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The river may run away with us, but we wade into the shallowest water and watch a boy climb the bluff on the other side:

Let go, a call from the water, and he drops into the deep center of the mountain stream where we will spend two nights sleeping on sandstone glade in the rain. We can’t put down roots here— 

But you will learn to fly fish for largemouth, bluegill, sunfish, brook trout, and throw them back into their second chance

And you take between finger and thumb waxy, blue berries of Eastern Red Cedar growing there next to our tent

Where we lay on your grandmother’s quilts, folded in half and layered one on top of the other, and cup hot hands in gloved palms while we sleep

After I read to you the article in Taproot about what happened to the landscape of the Pacific Northwest when we still hunted beavers as pests and how we’re reintroducing them, hoping dry creek beds will re-saturate if we make amends—you fall asleep before I reach the second page, but I read all five aloud 

Before pulling on secondhand duck boots and your dad’s rain jacket to return to the fire where I swap out dry wool socks with wet, so they hang over the flame

At the morning goodbye before you drive east and I north, there is sun on our faces and things we hadn’t noticed in the rain: little bluestem, tickseed, churchmouse threeawn’s plum forks and splits, growing in shallow soil.

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Mary Sauer is a writer and mother living in Kansas City, Missouri, and the managing editor of the upcoming Salt Tooth Press. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her work often touches on caregiving, complicated family dynamics, and neurodiversity, and she has published or upcoming work in Glassworks Magazine, MER Literary, Arc Poetry, The Washington Post, and Popula.

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