Entrée DM 110

We crunched through a winter noon.
He carried the baby in his back pack;
I held three year old Andi’s hand,
as our snow shoes ruffled Earth
Mother’s wind-scoured coat.
We gloried in mountain lion’s tracks,
no deer in sight. Winded, we sat.
He squinted out across the lake.
The New Year ice is far too thin.
I snuggled Andi’s small neck
as she perched on my lap,
the baby faded away. So different

now. Once, we couldn’t come
to this height before July.
As we hiked down, scratchy drops
blurred my eyes. I’ve passed
this sign many eerie times, as
into the dusk I speed. The talus
slants beneath my boots. My eyes
scan over poor seared edelweiss.
No water tempts its roots; cells
sense the effort would prove nil.
This unmelted valley cowers,
a mountain-swathed chimera, hiding
out from ravens’ directionless eyes.
Yet those obsidian-dark orbs take
in the next suspended sight---old
phone poles, lines gone, waver on
across the snow-encrusted flat,
flag this encounter’s endless march
to any town that might feed our chill.