TRAVIS TRUAX

Cimarron County, Oklahoma

The wind will not end here.

Our farthest memories

howl their return into sight.

Prairie grass, bunched and bent

leans east holding hands.

·       

The river tells us

how to live, how to move.

Barbed wire fence-lines

teach our eyes about horizons.

By day the darkest corners

of the land harbor all the cold

of coming October air.

·       

If we lived by what the wind does

we would have more tears. We would die

trying to be a season.

·       

We admit our dreams

to a land that demands them.

The big mountains to the west

have made us this way.  

Travis earned his Bachelor's degree in English from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 2010. After college he spent several years working in various national parks out west, including Zion, Olympic, and Yellowstone. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flyover Country, Quarterly West, The Eastern Iowa Review, The Flagler Review, and Barnstorm. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.