Funny how one childhood memory
can bring another childhood
to mind. I

remember a precipice we
called Red Shell

and imagine in retrospect
a mishearing of shale somewhere
along the line — though

the evidence of a long ago ocean
in this dry place was never
hard to find. So it was

easy to hear shell for shale,
and there was no doubt about red.

It was on the other side of a barbed wire fence
that marked the edge of the next ranch
over, close to Romero Cemetery,
where Frenchy McCormick lay,

untended then, so always more interesting
than Boot Hill. There were stories
about the rancher next door,
a shotgun, and rock salt
that made climbing through that fence
feel like slipping over the edge of the world
every time. Remembering walking
sideways down the sharp slope
alongside the sheer face of the precipice is
the only way I’ve ever understood
crossing the stream by feeling the stones.

You had to find your feet or slide down
the side of what you’d swear was a mountain
of shattered shale made more red with the blood
that sharp gravel could draw if you lost them. Red

makes me think of the possum
a friend killed there once, the red blood on
red shale, broken, the sadness when
we saw it wasn’t playing
possum. Still

finding my feet,
and it feels like falling
sideways, slow, to keep the red in,
one childhood leading to another between friends.