“Against my better judgment, I sought out
The hut of a poet.” No love lost between
My better judgment and me. A clear sky,
To be sure, and above freezing, to be sure,
But not by much, and stiff winds off the cliffs
Gusting to seek out every weakened seam.
Do you know what a pale blue sky and blood
Moons have in common? Air’s theft of blue
Wavelengths from sunlight, dividing white
Into robin’s egg and darkly bruised orange.
Pale blue now and pumpkin blood coming.
Look around. Not a tree to be found. Last
Afternoon of the previous calendar year
Old mine shafts in dry mountains rang out
Loud and clear with silence. Not a bird
To be heard once engines stopped purring.
“It goes in a mile, straight, then up a flight,
Then up another flight, then down in three
Directions, like steps. Fifteen miles of shafts
In all. My buddy and I explored it with GPS.
Dangerous though. No animals in it. Never
Saw a single bat. Well, at the very end, when
It opens into the sun again, you run into rats.
Perfect for packrats. They don’t like seeing
You coming up at them out of the black. I
Don’t like seeing them. But they avoid me
As I squeeze past them, mostly. Mostly,
They don’t want you running into them.”
Back up into the brilliant (why brilliant?) blue.
In the desert, in the mine, in the deep shafts,
In the packrat middens, shines, shines and is
Everything, the forest of ten trillion pines.
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