We meet up in your edge high home,
you at ease, me an alien in this treeless zone.
You are a sinister countenance on the trail;
menacing spiked horns,
species appropriate beard – goatee,
hair-coat granite gray.
Beneath towers of stone,
you trot surefooted, not tempted
by the lethal seduction of gravity.
Your black cloven hoofs
stomp small storms of dust.
You graze on mouthfuls of Alpine succulence,
ground in the sideways motion of your lower jaw.
You gaze at me in mountain silence and
I am undone by the radiance of your unsullied innocence.
You do not care that I am guilty of some recent impertinence.
Your business is not judgment but grass
and you work as my history passes by you undisturbed.
Will I ever stand with such enormous comfort
in my unsloped and level version of the world?
August/2014
Logan Pass
Glacier National Park
Montana