Is that life?—to stand by a river and go.

—William Stafford

The dog bends her ear to the steel tracks as they begin to hum. Part shepherd part hound, her gait is smooth, and when she trots across the bridge that connects our mountain to the town, she appears to float: each pad-strike pushing air like the broad beat of geese who V the gap of the river. Where water widens and slushes in the slow flow of January, if you look up, you’ll see the sky break into pieces around the bridge’s rusted arches. The train won’t arrive for another few minutes so the dog pauses at the end of the bridge to inspect the abutment. Poured more than a century before, the stone soaks up the curried piss, which like the dog’s tracks will wash away in March’s meltwaters. She sniffs an abandoned refrigerator, door askew like a broken wing, then trails after deer scent behind a tangled screen of branches. Downriver the clack of the train echoes and multiplies, and near the bend where the paper mill stands, an osprey releases from the top of a snag: bird’s sharp cry impossible to hear over the rail squeal that deafens the boy who cups his hands and hollers after a dog with no name.