Twenty years of camping on the Eastern Sierra, we climbed
out of of the steep box canyon, ascent nearly vertical,
legs leaden, fingers puffed in summer heat. Mountains
beyond mountains recharged my sturdy heart as I plodded,
determined to keep up with you.
Now we sit on our favorite log, meadow faded in the gloaming,
watching bats hunt. In the west, last vestige of light on the rim
of this vast granite bowl, tall cedars print a row of letters
on the flat page of sky. “Some people think that trees
have feelings,” you say. We muse: when did sonar first leap
from a bat’s head? How did a chloroplast cell grab radiance,
excite electrons, jump energy levels, making sugar for earth
to eat? I sense you beside me in the dark, sure and comforting
as vanilla scent of Jeffrey Pines.
It’s been a rough year, my son, and yet we’re here once again,
safe under the vault of heaven, stars just clearing space to shine.
It was never a given I’d make it up that ridge, that I’d reach
the tree line, hauling old bones after you to bare tundra, my feet
trudging behind yours, maintaining enough space between us
for talc-like dust to settle.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathryn Jordan received her MA in English at UCB. A music teacher and poet, her book, Riding Waves, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. She is the 2016 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Conference Prize. Her poems appear in The New Ohio Review, The Comstock Review, Reed Magazine, Birdland, and Roar, among others. She is an avid birder and loves to ramble in the East Bay Hills, translating birdsong to poetry whenever possible.