Over there the White Mountains are exploding with sunlight
After the cold and snow everything basks in it, it’s almost too bright
The land is preening, unself-conscious, chest out eyes closed soaking in light and heat hungrily
The land is wearing its million-year robes… its cloaks of time…
Somehow I feel as though I should kneel, or bow
It wears a changing eternity, an eternity of many slow rises and then many slow falls
Many becomings and as many comings apart
The land shines with sharp dignity in some way
To my human eye it seems more fragile than it used to be
As the roads are cut and mountain sides are hewn and trees are leveled
But eternity absolves all this emotional detail
Eternity is not a fragile process
And we are not so separate
Our destruction not so unique
As the faces of other destructions.
And not even our hearts so unique as to be the only hearts that’ve felt it
As we may esteem to think
Those White Mountains over there-
Their forests look so sparse I feel I could count the trees – but it’s not true
I watch this glowing anonymous terrain in the distance
These unnamed ripples of earth known most by jack rabbits and deer, coyotes and mice
I imagine that over there there are forests like these I am in here; spacious and robust
Mostly left alone except for the roving bands of firewood poachers
Who stay close to the roads
I imagine it’s warm over there (it’s not)
I imagine there is only but a slight breeze (or maybe none at all)
Here there is ice sliding off my tarp and I dare to find something as bright