In the White Mountains
I
No.
I'm remembering the man
with the trick knee,
his expression
so serene
as he sat by the trail junction
in that upland
pine-
grove loomed with the afternoon
sun —
so at ease with his own
injury.
II
The night before
you had bought a phosphorescent
star chart,
and we stood in the unpolluted dark
unearthing
as though at long last those figures,
those creatures
shining in the tar.
III
And how the birch roots and pine roots
clenched the granite —
strata upon strata,
everything holding tight.
IV
No. Not many paths up the same mountain.
A hundred
mountains. Ten
thousand
paths. And each with its final
meal, its sip of cloud, its savor of ozone,
its clean
crumb of wind.
V: New International Writing from Edinburgh, 2007