by Martha Heyneman
My sister was a hiker.
I sat.
C’mon, Marph, she conjured me,
let’s take a hike. I
groaned from somewhere
deep in Tolstoy or
Dostoevsky. But
unwound my leg from
the arm of the overstuffed
chair and
followed her. Trudging,
complaining, how much
farther? We are
almost there, she
always said, “just
around the next corner” &
suddenly the world opened
out around us: hills
behind, in front of us
infinite space: the Bay, the city,
the Golden Gate, the
Pacific Ocean, & all the way
to China, or just
heaven, maybe,
stillness and overwhelming
sunlight everywhere instead of
air–but air too, fresh
wind from the ocean, the call
“Come away!”
The wind is rising, follow
the Sun into a still finer
level of silence,
world within world
standing on top
of Pansy Hill or sitting
on Big Rock.
— from Juniper Volume 2, Issue 3