Kristen Gunther
Wolf 690
The two climbers were spotted long before
their remains could be lifted from the ice,
three tons of collapsed and refrozen face.
We’d gotten the word yesterday, his friend
lost in the brittle late-spring cliffs.
Today, he drives 25 northbound―
huddled against the wind, I do not speak.
These landscapes defy easy elegies:
the other lead in the Billings Gazette,
Wolf 690, mange-struck and hungry,
shot dead by a rancher after her pack,
from Druid Peak, sickly dispersed,
and died deep in hostile territories
(the only kind wolves know). She cut a sheep,
he had to shoot. The story of the west;
by now he must be in his home mountains,
facing them with grim love. I know that road―
and how the land rises, each eking inch.
Kristen Gunther is a doctoral student in ecology at the University of Wyoming, and she holds an MFA from the same institution. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, CutBank, Word Riot, New Plains Review, and High Country News, and has aired on Wyoming Public Radio. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming. Her website can be found at www.kristengunther.com
Return to March 2014 Edition
The two climbers were spotted long before
their remains could be lifted from the ice,
three tons of collapsed and refrozen face.
We’d gotten the word yesterday, his friend
lost in the brittle late-spring cliffs.
Today, he drives 25 northbound―
huddled against the wind, I do not speak.
These landscapes defy easy elegies:
the other lead in the Billings Gazette,
Wolf 690, mange-struck and hungry,
shot dead by a rancher after her pack,
from Druid Peak, sickly dispersed,
and died deep in hostile territories
(the only kind wolves know). She cut a sheep,
he had to shoot. The story of the west;
by now he must be in his home mountains,
facing them with grim love. I know that road―
and how the land rises, each eking inch.
Kristen Gunther is a doctoral student in ecology at the University of Wyoming, and she holds an MFA from the same institution. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, CutBank, Word Riot, New Plains Review, and High Country News, and has aired on Wyoming Public Radio. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming. Her website can be found at www.kristengunther.com
Return to March 2014 Edition