Out and Back

Keeping the reservoir on our right

as a clock keeps time,

between its good ear and steadiest hand,

we lean into the mountain.

Your old body and mine

(age: you minus you

before me) draw

themselves over and over, over

and over themselves,

until they are finished.

This is California in the rough spring, after drought.

Careful of erosion, we pick between

its hoard of water

and its fire roads.

From that narrow gully, we were brought.

We hear on the news: a local woman walking in the moonlight

came up dead in a dry creek below the trail.

From that narrow place, God brought

wild iris studded on the vale,

pink blooms

of pain in the joints.

The trail bends a way it shouldn’t, according to the map.

You stumble on a root, bone of this road

that everywhere suddenly shows.

Keep the water on your right

and you will end as you’ve begun,

the trail guide says.

But I’m already far

from this:

some animal, stupid, walking the trail after dark,

a trail it knows from childhood.

Its face appears familiar but I don’t

recognize its feet. Finishing as they do

in a flush of blossoms,

in another country.