Patriotism

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice. —Robert Frost


My father used to say he loved his country,
by which he meant the land
between the Klamath Mountains and
the Modoc Plateau, from the Oregon border
to the southern tip of the cascades
and the mountain the Karuk called Úytaahkoo.

He roamed that region for years, took
Sabbath there regardless of the day,
and tried to know its living things—except
the goddamned people. He’d walk ten wordless miles,
then stop to drink or mend a cairn and drop some
scrap of thought. Then he’d set off again, quickened,

as if his speech had broken something
more than silence. There was often a boy
behind him, struggling to keep pace, footsore
and afraid that in those high places,
lightning lurked in the boiling clouds.
What boy’s father isn’t a god for a time?

When my father died, we brought home his effects.
The clothes he’d worn, folded in a paper bag,
still held the scent of sweat and ponderosa pine.
Such smells, he said, a man could draw into himself
and hold and know he was alive. Today
I followed those words up Shasta until

they vanished in an air so thin my burning
lungs felt void. Inspired, I stood looking down
at the country I’d come from, choked
in the wildfire haze. From off the growing glacier,
a cold wind came whistling its ragged
anthem, which in time, tatters all flags.