Letter to Josie Bassett Morris
—Wild West cattle rustler and rancher at Cub Creek, just outside what is now Dinosaur
National Monument, Uintah County, Utah. The cabin she built and lived in from 1913-1963
is now a historic site.
How long can you woo the blank face
of cattle?
How does your own voice caress
the stretch of 160 acres,
all those drawn-out talks with coreopsis,
poppies, cosmos as wide-mouthed
and electric as the night sky
riding over dust and dinosaur bones?
Wonder Woman of the West,
you homesteaded alone
over 50 years, divorced four husbands,
the fifth’s death still suspicious.
For you, Prohibition was business:
apricot brandy and chokecherry wine,
long vine of men twisting
around your door, even Butch Cassidy,
that sagebrush pirate and your sometime
kick-off-the-boots lover,
hiding out in your shade.
Peppery old lady, bumble bee,
bobcat in an apron,
mud on your boots and bruises
on your knees, did you still keep
a shotgun near the door
when you were eighty,
arms muscled but a little shaky?
Years of splitting the lips
of timber or wrangling joint
and spoke into the crook
of fence posts, like the scientists
down the road slowly reassembling
each tree-length bone
of Utahraptor, Allosaurus.
The windows in your cabin
are the bright squares
of a pillbox, that tidy
and tight. Where are the braided
rugs now, delicate as tropical fish
sleeping on the ocean floor?
Your sea was dust,
your ship this tiny log cabin.
Could you smell Spring
before it came in the long bend of cloud
and the storm of sparrows? Your bed
of thyme and rosemary like the brightness
of your babies’ faces,
wild juniper and pinyon pine
the spices of your air.
Sometimes it feels good
to let the world pass you by,
to open your door
and there’s nothing but sky.
Mother of mud, of steaming pies
of cow shit, of herbs delicate
as a newborn’s wrist, I’ve come
to the temple
of your home
and left nothing but footprints
and this poem, a contract
to apprentice your ghost.
National Monument, Uintah County, Utah. The cabin she built and lived in from 1913-1963
is now a historic site.
How long can you woo the blank face
of cattle?
How does your own voice caress
the stretch of 160 acres,
all those drawn-out talks with coreopsis,
poppies, cosmos as wide-mouthed
and electric as the night sky
riding over dust and dinosaur bones?
Wonder Woman of the West,
you homesteaded alone
over 50 years, divorced four husbands,
the fifth’s death still suspicious.
For you, Prohibition was business:
apricot brandy and chokecherry wine,
long vine of men twisting
around your door, even Butch Cassidy,
that sagebrush pirate and your sometime
kick-off-the-boots lover,
hiding out in your shade.
Peppery old lady, bumble bee,
bobcat in an apron,
mud on your boots and bruises
on your knees, did you still keep
a shotgun near the door
when you were eighty,
arms muscled but a little shaky?
Years of splitting the lips
of timber or wrangling joint
and spoke into the crook
of fence posts, like the scientists
down the road slowly reassembling
each tree-length bone
of Utahraptor, Allosaurus.
The windows in your cabin
are the bright squares
of a pillbox, that tidy
and tight. Where are the braided
rugs now, delicate as tropical fish
sleeping on the ocean floor?
Your sea was dust,
your ship this tiny log cabin.
Could you smell Spring
before it came in the long bend of cloud
and the storm of sparrows? Your bed
of thyme and rosemary like the brightness
of your babies’ faces,
wild juniper and pinyon pine
the spices of your air.
Sometimes it feels good
to let the world pass you by,
to open your door
and there’s nothing but sky.
Mother of mud, of steaming pies
of cow shit, of herbs delicate
as a newborn’s wrist, I’ve come
to the temple
of your home
and left nothing but footprints
and this poem, a contract
to apprentice your ghost.
May 2024
Sunni Brown Wilkinson is the author of the poetry collection The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of the Sundress Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has been awarded New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Prize, and the Sherwin Howard Award. Her essay “Swimmers” is included in the 2023 Best of the Net Anthology. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in Pleasant View with her husband and three sons.
Art: Eschscholzia Californica by Kat Cervantes