I saw seven geese heading for the mountain
three pairs in a string and one outlier
above the wind-blown papers in the parking lot
pointed themselves at the summit as I pointed myself away.
I come down off the mountain and
the ten thousand things jostle.
I go back up the mountain.
Along the trail through Murchio Gap
a rill, still wet, holds gray-green sedges
brown sedge flowers sway slightly as I pass
kick up muddy droplets where the rill seeps across the trail:
the grapevine flowers in tiny clusters. The trail is steep
and seven times my feet went out from under
and I was canted in a spray of gravel.
The important thing, your balance thus upset:
to gauge where your transient momentum sends you,
to throw yourself, with all the grace you have, in that direction
and ride the sliding talus, laughing.
It is easier, the walk upward:
I am compelled toward the summit. Today
as the trail tilted skyward I groaned, again
and forced myself on, again
out of the humid canyon and its shade and wet
as though the dry fire road was still enmired, but then
the lightness, and I forced myself a thousand feet above that
to rest, though I did not care to. I lay
there in the road, facing the crown
of an old liveoak above me,
for fear I was too light, at least
the branches above would catch me. An hour after
I stomped on the summit rock with right foot, then left
to walk a loop six miles around the mountain
to bury my mind in California juniper
and fall a thousand feet in just a mile.
