​ELEVATION
​

Arriving at the krummholz
bathed in cloud, atop granite mossy-
cloaked and lichened, the fox
darts across a rock-sheltered shadow,
even in her dis- and reappearances, a bright shiv
frisking through gnarled limbs. You
graze my shoulder with yours and point,
helloing to the vulpine once-was
in the fog and fir,
juniper and comandra, that queue
knitting summit to sky, then look up
listening for a yip, branch, junco,
murmur, what announces the hidden.

None of what is calm to us is truly calm
or much less still,
peak or bight or riverbank.
Quiet is never quiet, the gray jay
rends it with joy (as do, in their way, fungi).
Still, we seek peace beneath the heart-leafed birch,
tempering our breathing,
ushering its sweetness from acidic duff,
vixens’ fur-muffled feet so serene
when stalking, and the profound
xeric
yaw of time to which we all succumb,
zephyr and gale, mama and papa.