People sometimes say that others have to earn their respect.

 As you climb up through soft Sierra Nevada footpaths,

It sounds discerning and analytical,

 kicking up dark brown earth and skirting ferns,

like they don’t have time for fools, sloths, or floozies.

 these winding pines and cedars

But there’s a tricky undercurrent in their still-water view of the world.

 give way to hills of granite; light grey and majestic,

They see every stranger as unwhole and unwholesome,

 rough under toe, but untouchable in a way /

 that you can’t really get to know them.

perhaps an empty cistern that might be filled

 Even the trees here, ancient kings proudly standing

with rare rain to make them useful

 sentinels in the cracks

to make them worth talking to instead of at.

 just appear fragile from a distance.

 

They’re wrong.

 They will never see you; they will never know you’re there,

They’re so intolerably and ignorantly wrong.

 sitting in their shade, granted with apathy,

They’re destroying the world with which we interact.

 staring empty-minded but satisfied at their lake waters below.

 

—

The first prompt: write about something you care about.

The second prompt: write about something beautiful / fragile.

Then the pieces are woven, line by line, into a new piece.