Austin Araujo

ANOTHER CROSSING

The river sloughs off mist, elk approach
its banks for a slow drink. Moon perched
in the mezzanine of the night. Dogs clamor
for each other miles away. I settle
onto this stone seat trying hard to see anything
but the men stepping into the rushing water,
each holding a small bag over his head. Striding
into the silence I’ve embraced. What crossing
can be done when already in Arkansas?
One of them falls hard into the White River,
foot probably catching on some rock’s jag.
Those in front keep walking, those behind
go around his brief thrashing below the surface.
His mouth opens with ¡estoy bien!
when he rises which at last disturbs the elk
who look up so that they might study him,
like me, so that we all might see the man
who is suddenly here, who, of course,
resembles my father, droplets of water tumbling
off his creased brown brow back into the river.
He blows snot from each nostril and runs
his fingers through the hair almost landing
on his shoulders as it does in my father’s first photo
ID, taken in Mexico, listing the wrong birthday,
catching him at fifteen, looking like this man,
this mijito hauling his hand across the water.
He works hard to match pace, impossible, like his being
in the White River, crossing twenty-odd years
after the fact. Who needs dreams when I’ve got eyes.
The others emerge out of the water, disappear
into the woods, refusing to wait. The elk and me,
welcome committee. He climbs into the bramble,
where he hollers, gaining ground on the group. 

AUSTIN ARAUJO is a writer from northwest Arkansas. He is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. His first book of poems, At the Park on the Edge Country (Mad Creek Books, 2025), won the Charles B. Wheeler Prize.