Brit

you are the mountains,
stretching her white arms wide
holding basins,
kissing sky.

you are the white goddess,
the porcelain deity
so fragile solid
in her lotus flower.

you are the moon and the new snow
in the
pure still valley night.

mountain belle

it's a dream, this night ski
and i can't see where the land falls away down
or dips up and rolls

i just follow the folk who went before
fast in the softthick light
and trust

sunday churchday

There is some solid wholeness that returns
On a ridge in the sun after winter hiking
And after drinking cold water beneath broken ice.
It always takes an least an hour for the
Tumblejumblefantasy thoughts to dissolve
And leave me alone with god.

Sometimes I worry I spend too much time alone,
That my eccentric, misanthropic tendencies will
Swell and no one will like me.
But I trust my shadow on the valley floor,
Surrounded by burned trees and slanted rock.

I trust that halo around the sun
And the silence of my bones
and the earth half hidden under snow.

the only appropriate response is gratitude

my legs ache
with so much excitement,
barefoot dancing by the wood stove
post hole hiking in steep canyon bottom.

shhhh, i think, don't tell anyone!
the hidden part isn't safe anymore,
not when the computerboyfriend has become my job
and i think i'm too tired to reach that deep place
inside,
where shoulder meets cheek in
unnameablegentleselflovetruth.

but if i'm out of challenges,
maybe we won't stand in the parking lot,
drinking from a growler,
singing an old folk song
and
keeping time with our stamping feet
in the falling snow.

edges are sharper and softer

Love song for Piedra Hot Springs

Oh Beloved, I'm so glad you came on this trip!
I didn't think I'd packed you in with the sleeping bag and stove,
hidden among the woolen socks and bourbon.

But there you were!
In tree starlight silhouettes,
in the so deep a canyon,
in the so slow a moon rise,
in the steam.

I heard your bass harmony under our singing voices,
your parental chuckling at our philosophical, leisurati pontification.

I tried to catch your (the moon's) reflection on the hot water's surface,
wiggling my fingers in enraptured joy.
But you only split into a thousand pieces
and laughed in the cold river surging by.

I would spend but all of my life loving you,
so please keep on stowing away!

The mountains came late in life to me
or I came late to them.
Like a desert river, I am slow,
meandering through canyons and carving sandstone,
lazy and muddy and deep.

Breathing hard from the uphill run,
I look out over what I still think are foothills.
No jagged, rocky peaks these,
just miles of rolling scrub oak, ponderosas, and snow.

The moon rises in the pink streaked sky
and I am clear, bubbly, sparkling.

The Alaska Range

Jagged rock, swirling snow.
Flurried skies cover the fleeting sun.
Glacier, moraine, mountains.

I rest for a moment on the side of the trail,
hot in wool and down.
I leave the skis on and flop side saddle into the drift.

Stalks of grass with wheatseedtop
at eye level wave in the arctic wind
and somehow perfectly personify the point...

thought free.
Only gratitude, love, contentment, peace.

...

...
They used to say humans are social creatures. "They!"
There is no "they" now. I never realized how much I depended on their blanket definitions, advice, even as I scorned it.
The social aspect is mostly gone now. Does that mean we as creatures will no longer be Human?
All that is left now is a handful of old men bumbling through the broken ruins of a world past riddled with machines who pay us no mind.
-
I don't know what will happen to me, or to the rest of us.
I don't know if there are any babies being born, or if love exists.
I don't know where my wife is, my daughter. If their bodies still take up space somewhere on this planet.
Each day I wake up and turn to the watery sun and turn away.
...

driving through mountains with ukulele and travelers in bright colors