the way boulders come together
to make a mountaintop trail
like a puzzle with missing pieces
into which a foot might fit
or a yellow birch root
or a plush runner of moss
it becomes a sanctuary
from the sicknesses borne by ticks
the rashes fevers and nausea
fatigue and brain fog
all the gordian knot holes
untied by death
just off-trail where the fallen
collapse into themselves
and an alarm call passes
from red squirrel to red squirrel
among conifers where the wind
can’t stay still
but the trail rejoins the road
there’s no escape
the bumblebee at my feet
has a fling with some wild basil
dance partners in a small hell
of roadside weeds
the ecological consequence
of a war of each against all
hermit thrushes conjure
a melancholy sweetness
in one key after another
a sob catches in my throat
overhead a vulture banks
on heat rising from the gravel
blue stone gouged out
of adjacent valleys
where the pits someday go back
to shallow seas
wave upon wave of blue ridges
vanishing into the haze
