FAREWELL TO CACHE VALLEY

“She looked back,” it is written,
“and she became
a pillar of salt.”

I know now not to look back too long to
the valley of autumn leaves, the creek
with the rope swing that turns college women
and men into muddy children, the air that surges
through the channels of the heart and propels the feet
to running – when it doesn’t smell of
car exhaust and manure.

I must move on, or the future,
which bumbles forward like a bulky
eighteen-wheeler, may trample me down
and scatter my atoms – so many spruce
needles – across the fields.

This last night still draws me out
to stare at dark windows, locked doors
behind which those with whom I’ve
shared my laughter slumber.

I know what drew her gaze
to the burning below her, why her tears mix
with the salt of her own destruction. Even sinners
must ache with love.


Stephen Bradford is just getting started as a poet, having recently graduated from Utah State University in Logan, Utah, with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. A poem of his will appear in an upcoming issue of Obsessed With Pipework magazine.