I like to live in the scent of pine
on a thaw-some winter morning,
viscous tendrils of tree perfume
thick in the air, scent of evergreen,
yes, but a warmer scent, too,
like honey, like vanilla, like must.
I like the way the scent lives in me
as I move through the tussocks
of snow. I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here
in the moment. As if I, too, might remember
how surely I depend on this earth,
how surely it depends on me.
Posts Tagged ‘mountains’
What’s Really at Stake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cascade Mountains, mountains, nature, pine, scent, trees on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
While Hiking on Lizard Head Pass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, grief, healing, hermit thrush, hiking, mountains, music, natural world, song on June 23, 2024| 15 Comments »
I forgot, today, to be sad.
Perhaps, more truly,
the song of the hermit thrush
ringing through the alpine meadow
gathered me into its echoing
and lifted me out of myself
and landed me fully in the field
where the green corn lilies
reached up to my waist.
While listening to the thrush,
I forgot how things fall apart,
held as I was by the long
whistled song, haunting and rich,
flute-like and clear as it pealed
through the spruce, honest
as any church bell, urgent
as a gong, holy as a woman
set free by a song.
Wilding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, Corinne Platt, mountains, presence, swimming on August 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
for Corinne
It is always near-freezing,
this high alpine lake where
we slide into oddly blue water,
and bare strangled sounds
tear from our throats
as if our own wildness
is shredding through
manicured versions of self.
I crave it, this scraping away
of everything that isn’t
limb-thrash and lung-gasp
and skin-scream and heart-bang
and wild uncontrollable breathing,
crave the tingling after,
the feral laughter, the way
the world slips more deeply into us
when we dare to slip
more deeply into the world.
Somewhere You Feel Free
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aster, belonging, hiking, mountains, widlflowers on July 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »
You belong among the wildflowers.
—Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”
Standing alone
in a high and steep meadow
surrounded by a million million
pale purple asters,
a person might be,
at least for a moment,
a many petaled thing,
might know the blue sky
in a new blue way;
might want to visit the self
as curious as a bee
stepping into the golden center
of things. What luck
to climb into beauty,
to stumble into
the self greater than the self,
to forget for a moment that worry,
that burden, that loss,
and simply purple, to wildly
purple, to purple with abandon,
to purple without thought,
to humbly purple,
to purple.
On Red Mountain Pass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, mountains, path on June 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for C, A, A, A and J
I want to share with you a trail with no map
and the clean scent of spruce and a clear Colorado sky.
I want to spend an afternoon above tree line
in a field of corn lilies and alpine buttercups
the pica chirping brightly in the rockfall.
Let’s not find the lake we were looking for.
Let’s stop where our feet say stop.
I want to share a leap and a shimmy,
a chocolate cookie, the mighty salt of love.
I want to slide down snowfields on our raincoats,
to find more paths to take another day,
to wade through the cold rush of change.
I want to take a bolt cutter to any door
that won’t let us in, to let the ears of my heart
attune to your words, to lose our hats to the wind
and find them again. And as the night
fills the room, I want to sing as the guitar
of friendship finds a new tune. I want to hear it
play on long after the day has gone.
With Any Luck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged invitation, mountains, poem, poetry on June 17, 2016| 1 Comment »
Meet me in summer
when the mountains
are softened by fields
of blue lupine
and the creeks run clear
with the memory of snow.
With any luck,
we’ll get lost until
we, too, begin to bloom,
until whatever is cold in us
melts and races away
with a bright and bubbling laugh.
There are days we forget
how to make a fist,
how to speak any language
but praise. Meet me
in summer when the old
high trails are open—
what else might we find
behind the crumbling
mines—some share
of ourselves we’ve yet
to have met—something
so spacious we never
dreamt it would fit
inside our skin.
With any luck,
it will follow us home.
Late June in the San Juans
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, midsummer, mountains, poem, poetry on June 21, 2014| 1 Comment »
Just because it’s the longest day of the year
doesn’t mean that the bean sprouts in the garden
won’t freeze tonight. Again. As they did last night.
And two nights before that. So I water them.
I water them real good, for I am still shocked
and delighted that the process of freezing creates
a degree of heat. Every time I consider that fact,
it stuns me. It’s like a joke that makes me laugh
no matter how many times I have heard it.
And though it’s all rather predictable amongst the rows,
what comes up when and what the frost will kill,
it is always new. I never stop marveling at the pure
determination of those tiny leaves as they thrust
through the hard dirt crust. And marvel again at their
vulnerability on nights like tonight when the wind
gets lost some other where and the stars shine clear
in the cold night air and the frost doesn’t care
if I’ve planted the beans again. And again. The earth
spins on its invisible spit and summer goes on
as it always does, different than it’s ever been.
Step by Step by Step
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mountains, poem, poetry, road on March 30, 2014| 1 Comment »
It’s a dead end, the road.
But that is only the road.
At the end is a trail
that will lead you past
the waterfall, up through
the larkspur, waist high,
up past the turquoise
glacial lakes. And then
it ends, the trail. But
that is only the trail.
The mountains do not
end. There is the scree field
to scramble on. Clamber
up to the ridge, and then there
is over the ridge, but it is not
over, this journey. Were you
hoping that it was done?
Looking for a reason to turn
around, retrace your steps,
go home? Look. No
matter which direction
you go, you are already home.
Three Crazy Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, kiss, love, luck, mountains, opening, poem on February 3, 2012| 1 Comment »
Every part of me
burning and still, go figure,
I feel lucky.
Lost and scared, still
the only thing that makes sense:
fall deeper in love.
Light spills all over
the mountains—oh morning, please
kiss me like that.