North Fork Mountain

by FRAN WESTWOOD

Spot a side trail— 
stumble up the slanted path
as panting retinas hunt for colored birds 
calling from within muddled hillside tufts,

even at the crest 
camera lenses misunderstand 
the wide quilt of sun-threaded forest.

By a river near here 
Annie Dillard wrote I saw. 
I was seen. Was rung like a bell—
under cemented eyelids,
backbones resting against cool rock,
small stories of light roll over, rustling 
olive buds bust up through packed soil.

Look below— 
generations of gray thrones, 
freckled turquoise lichen, dried petals 
of shadowy fungii skin.

Tiptoe all the way out 
the diving board of ivory-streaked stone, 
a watchman’s tower over the unfolding pages 
of the changing valley—

what wind blew grass bulbs wide 
into hung glass ornaments, what mouth 
whispered flesh onto sloping curves of earth,

what breath unkept by any wall is wooing 
your dampened bell to move again?