Forest Falls

If you hike with me, if you really see,
you will climb dangerous rock scree
past the "do not go further" signs
at the bottom of the waterfall
in the San Gorgonio Wilderness,
where the road ends and the
black bears bang trash can lids
at night to scare the campers away,

water crashing here from 9,300 feet

to a little over the elevation of 7,000

in one swift, religion-affirming drop.

You can ask my daughter,
I brought her here when she was three
and the rhapsody of ice water brought
her to her little knees, something
skinned clean, she's 20 years old now

and just a little younger than you. It was
a baptism of a sort, we didn't make it
to church, I was raised Catholic,
and she was not. The water is our choir.

The Indians who gathered here,
some who still do, to gather acorns,
collect red mud for firing pots, Serrano,
Chemehuevi on break from fruit picking
at nearby Gillman Ranch, Cahuilla taking
a swim break from cattle herding, the
shaman, he lives at the bottom of the pool

and he talks to the white deer and the

nukatem, get too close, they'll drown you.

And if you hike with me, innocence is lost.
There is no such thing as love, only the
brutal windmilling of legs and arms,
flailing on the cliff edge, minds set on sitting
in the water at the bottom of the tallest fall,
where the water might pummel the weak
to the crush of its slippery pond, huge logs
of jeffery pine have found their way here,
broken glass, chunks of giant stone.

You have a different name than he,
and my daughter will no longer hike with me.
It's a brave and silly thing, to hike with me,
past drunks who misread the winding mountain
road en route here and smash into a cliff,
Forest Falls is a very dangerous place

And indeed, we are solemn, hearing the drums,
in our fat-tire procession past their fates,
the knifed water must be plastering their hair,
too, just like ours, and you think I am a saint
because I've transported you across the water
and I'm bringing you home safe, a light smile
and your skin sharp with a melted sting

and it's summer, the low time of year,
little do you know of the ice, the flooding,
the time I nearly jumped from the high ledge
time and space and stories merge more
neatly and make more sense that way
but driving slowly home was my destiny

it's just because I'd go to church later that day,
never mind the light speed of water
and its cold convenience, overturning boulders
and homes as it races and curves to the low places
of desert and sea, swinging its wild hips past
the village crouched at its frightening edges
the way you wrecklessly pursue me.