The trail rises from the valley—vein to 
sky—sometimes granite bedded, sometimes hushed
by pine needles.  When we walk it, we walk
for hours. We try to remember each 
turn, each nook.  Try to find the unmarked way.  
Blue skies bury us in expectations.

The creek that threads us up waxes and wanes 
between full bellied summer and the ice
of holding its breath.  There are days when we 
walk through the pygmy pines, wind whispering 
like the waves of a lost sea.  We giggle 
like dryads.  Other days the jagged maws 
of granite islands swallow us whole
until we can no longer find each other, our way.
Echoes that bend our voices apart.


We aren’t the first to want to annotate
this passage of wilderness no matter how 
steep it has become.  Half way up, black scar 
of an Arboglyph screams from the curved belly 
of an aspen tree that we aren’t first, or alone. 
God bless the tree that remembers the wound of another’s experience.

So that when we return to the level 
valley floor we hold that carved wilderness 
in us—static whisper of aspen leaves, 
the course we found, the hope like a hawk’s scream 
that pierced us until we carried on.