Chris Dombrowski | The Sun Magazine

Chris Dombrowski

Chris Dombrowski lives in Missoula, Montana, where he works as a river guide and teaches writing. His most recent book of poems is Earth Again.

— From July 2014
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Three

My friend says that a life properly lived is like a river. I take this to mean that headlong shots through roaring box canyons are inevitable, along with meandering, wandering main channels and high, roiling waters. There will be drought-drained shallows in which trout languish; winter, when the dark water is a spill of ink down the page of snow; and eddies, too, the hypnotic, elliptical movement of water running back on itself, around and around.

July 2014
Poetry

Weekly Apocalyptic, Or Poem Written On The Wall In An Ascending Space Capsule

We had to stop what we were doing / to see what we had done. Thing was, / we wouldn’t.

December 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Anti-Zen Zen

What’s befuddling is that I can’t figure out whether our days are passing at warp speed or at a geologic pace. If I could gain some distance on them, they would probably resemble a large Western river in runoff: so brimming at the banks that the casual observer might think the water is moving leisurely over stones, but soon a cottonwood trunk or fence post comes hurtling past, and the current’s true velocity becomes evident.

August 2011
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Oar: A Summer In Three Acts

I had anchored my boat on an inside bend of the snowmelt-fed Rock Creek. Whoever christened that body of water a “creek” had clearly never attempted to cross it in June, when the burly current threatens to unfoot the knee-deep wader.

December 2010
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