Natural History

poem by Katie Selbee

Good question.

The mountains me and you we fit
so well together

like the rock faces of the Rockies I pointed out to you
the other day out the car window that maybe you

were looking at or maybe ha ha knowing you you were
thinking of the Cold War or the Crimean

War or The War on Drugs or maybe your thoughts through
some recently-discovered black hole in your attention did

follow my pointing finger for once ha and
maybe you noticed too the wavy volcanic form-

ations the tangled layers of soft bed-
rock and how each stripe is so individual yet inseparably

cemented all because in the intense sweating heat of some
catastr-asmic event umm one maybe two maybe

three billion years ago or however-the hell-long
Suzuki says it’s been these two

shy pliable rock horizons met-up yep I read this once
and in their sliding and shifting and heavy breathing surprise

surprise suddenly became perfectly
fitting wait-what-was-I-saying?