Thirty million years ago,
a number I can say but cannot
comprehend, the mountains
where we hiked today
were covered in a deep layer
of volcanic ash which somehow
formed the spire of Lizard Head Peak.
I am constantly stunned by this world
that makes and remakes itself
out of the same matter.
How complicated, yet how simple:
we all belong to each other—
a thought that, for a time,
made me feel like a crumbling mountain
walking among crumbling mountains,
like a dry stream bed walking
along the dry stream bed,
like a clover gone to seed
walking amongst fields
of dry, papery clover petals,
every step a reunion.