David Beebe

Corinthians


Love is a lazy river.
Love is a tight pair of jeans.
Love is the passing of a cool canteen
in the shade of a breezy willow tree.
Love is one cigarette lighting another.

Love is in tell-tale signs, last call, or a thunderstorm in autumn.
Love is a crack inching its way across the windshield.
Love is North Dakota, seen through the bedroom window of a beautiful girl.

Love is a parent choosing their child over God.
Love is the epilogue.

David Beebe

Medicine woman later


It is hard not to picture their bodies,
stark in the contrast of new snow, lying
in the frigid shallow waters, their backs
to the sky in a final act of defiance –
her husband Black Kettle’s final words
heard only by yellow goldfinches,
preserved like Cheyenne arrowheads
hidden deep in pages of red earth, the
river playing with her long black hair like
bay grass in zephyr, her nine scars a
handwoven map leading back to Sand Creek.