wildscape. literary journal

Noli me tangere
by Sammy Bellin

and I couldn’t. You moved out of reach,
rustled away to Pacific rains,
galloping off to the Dalles
on weekends where once we’d sear the salmon
and paint his body from the stream.
Your horse is white
and pure as the Redeemer. I remember his pride. 
How you’d ride him, trotting
over trails where once we’d walk
among the aspen when winter calmed his rage
and left his frosty breath glistening on the cloudy boughs. 
We’d spend hours in silence. How easy it was, just to exist 
in the soft illumination of a bloodless moon
beaming in bright reflections on the top crust of snow
and you were dreaming, dreaming, dreaming
of the chattering rain leaking into a rust-thick bucket
while I plugged the roof and you sipped your chamomile 
and chatted about the endless rain and I made a joke
about the ark I started in the woodshop
only it wasn’t me. I was just a stand-in, a shadow	
still walking quietly through the muffled forest 
doing his best to leave what he saw the same as when he found it. 
I walked through the trail we’d take and found
no footsteps of my own, just hoof-prints stomped
into bitterly hard earth. Noli me tangere, you said,
and I didn’t, it would seem.

about the author // Sammy Bellin