Green Valley

by Taylor Graham

Dry Creek’s a bucking torrent after winter rains.
This afternoon, dregs of summer, willow boughs
smell brittle as old pulp fiction, and buckeye’s
a brown ghost of dead leaves. Only wild plum
stays true to the name of this place, dancing
green to any breeze that reaches up the valley.
Two young Herefords know only drought,
grasses that snap – matchsticks under-hoof.
Whoever named this valley must have come
in spring, wading knee-deep through fields
of vetch entangling native bunchgrass.
How dry the creek. Our way down-stream’s
a two-lane that stops for nothing but the first
red traffic light, eight miles down the road.