Creek Running North

Smell of sagebrush
sagebrush and juniper
juniper and dry red dirt
and water off the haze-hidden peaks

Or lodgepole pine
and sun-baked Stanislaus soil, the taste
of cool granite still slick
with snow,
June melt meadow spray
off the dog’s kicked-up feet, a
coruscation of glint, and apricots
and oranges in the pack.

Or the deep dank odor of tules
harrier hangs low over the pond, and we have
four hours’ driving before home.

I stood one day on a mountain of glass,
broken clinker chimes with each footfall,
pumice dust and my heart
of black obsidian.
The slope was impossible, a few shards
shed from solid block,
a hot flow frozen.
We were at altitude. My breath
rattled as glass shards. A voice
from below, and I peered over the edge
and down. She would not follow.

Imagined scent of sagebrush and
of juniper, and she tracks red dirt
beneath her. A building near me
sat vacant for a year
its windows dark cavities and
the sparrows flew in and out.
This week the glass went in. It is
a steep sheer monolith now, and today I nudged
still and broken wings that fell to earth
shattered without warning.