Plants here have roots as deep as I am tall
with less than a pinkie’s length of shrubby leaves
and tiny flowers to show for it.
And you’d think it would be snow
that keeps you away in winter –
but really it’s the wind.
Even gentle snowflakes scour the ground bare.
The snow that stays here remembers a time
before men first filled the air with coal dust, and
oh, it could tell you stories –
but it guards its silence in curved shadows,
sullen and unmelting.
Even in spring the colors breathe autumn.
Orange lichens and fast-moving shadows
brush their fingers over land you would swear,
from post cards,
was soft as velveteen.
Here the spirit yearns to rush over the exposed rocks
with their round rainwater mirrors,
longs to glide down the soft-edged hills
toward the jagged peaks far below.
But you can’t run ten yards without gasping.
The air conceals its thinness with a mendacious clarity.
The doors of distance are unlocked, every direction thrown wide open.
Everything is sharp as crystal here, everything is clear as glass –
here it’s all as unreachable as a reflection.
