by Ann E. Michael
on a mountainside the site
of a blaze not three years past,
slung between two pines tall enough
to be my age, which is young,
if you happen to be a tree,
I feel how the temperature drops
past dusk and wind picks up
and a hush ascends like moisture
drawn deep from soil by day
these dry summer months.
Silence spirals upward toward
tree crowns, clings to charred trunks,
muzzles chipmunks, settles into
negative spaces of the galaxy
above, which rises even higher
than this high slope with its
lupines and bluebonnets, its
sweet yellow clover and pasque flower,
all of which are noiseless around me
so that when I toss in my sleep
the rustle I create, suspended here,
resounds. Awakens me.
Lower Hermosa Campground
Durango, CO
— from Juniper Volume 3, Issue 3