On these trails, reminders

I need to spend some time alone with stars, escape
my body…the body politic, with all the clamor
sift the weight of all that’s decaying:

shelf of wolf lichen
looming ⎯ on a pine’s gashed flank.

I may still find some solace, as Basho, journeying
North   into my own body…
bitterbrush shadow
on a granite boulder⎯
the rapids, my earth.

On these trails, reminders of (im)mortality—
what’s beyond all the dying:

gnawed carcass
down the slope, the Jeffrey pine
spills its lignin,

pine beetles dump fungi
once pheromones signal the week trees.
My naturalist guide voices:
currency traders scavenging the vulnerable.

Pope Francis envisioned: Seeds of hope, patiently sown
in the forgotten fingers of the planet.

If only we could see as bees, spot the UV landing strips.
This salvation’s not in laws, or revolution. Follow
what’s illuminated… imagine anew.

If not, we will have lost our perch ⎯
the ecstatic infinite:   wolf lichen,
the Jeffrey’s truth, spilling its lignin
up the slope.