Wilderness II

There is a mountain in front of me

I set a traps and snares by the glassy river

Hoping to catch a step closer to home

My life is on my back

It comes with me wherever I go

There’s not much of it

But it takes care of itself

Brush off the brambles stick everywhere

My juniper bow gets caught on the wild roses

They and the stream are already beginning to freeze

We will drink with the cattle and the mustangs

Until the snow comes

And we melt the sky to parch our icy throats

You return to your base components

When the spirit has gone

Cast out, despondent in a frozen desert

Wilderness I

Rain on my window sounds like fat snowflakes

Smacking a blue tarp

The sky stretches towards freedom in every direction

Including down

How do I capture the feeling of being a free prisoner?

Walking across entire worlds before I may sleep

Today I carry water

Tomorrow I will dig a fire pit

only to cover it up and move on

again

Would you believe me if I said this blizzard

was the warmest I’ve felt in months?

I am freezing and sodden and being buried alive

The ice rises up to meet the snow pressing down

Will my shelter hold tonight?

Silent echoes might be the ghosts of wind

Passing through this worn canyon

I stopped dreaming of home

after the sky filled with shooting stars

and I couldn’t remember what it was

to not make flame between my hands

Space and solitude and silence

The only barrier between the heavens and me

Is the snow

Hurting but Unhurt

I am hurting but unhurt

Cars rush by

The constant murmur of rumbling waves

Crashing along the concrete shores

they too will erode into sand

given time

the audio stream trickles

down my spine

in concert with shooting pains

distracting

reminding

vertebrae by vertebrae

a biography of bones

this hair sheds itself

parting from my scalp and becoming

repulsive by relocation

tangling itself between my toes

unsavory

mine

something in the waves bumps

rhythmically deafening

offering a visionless freeze frame

with so many possibilities

I want to go with them