Mornings, or under slant pink sunsets,
after rains scour milky distances
pane-clear, when stacked hills
glint with white houses and mowers
turning corners, not glancing up,
casually, randomly glance up,
they wait on the horizon
—dark dunes, invisible almost,
a violet coast on the sky’s azure,
a glimmer of new continent.
Yesterday, you and I yielded.
Climbing tall switchbacks, we explored
wooded, evergreen peaks, flanks
turfed so rot-lush they exhale
a sweet smoke. We hiked gaps,
heather balds and coves of pasture,
glimpsing at layered roadcuts
more violent eras: upflexures
of ancient seabed, the tide
that washed Africa ashore.
The people! We couldn’t escape
auto-caravans’ tattering mufflers
behind, ahead of us, busloads
gawping at overlooks, exclaiming
as shutter-clicks staked claims:
a Lilliputian town (we played guessing
its name) lakes white as dewdrops
through haze—habitual, ascended-out-
of panoramas in metamorphosis,
perceived newly. Today we pause
at windows, confronting old pangs. Look.
On the horizon, a blue range without past
or populace, retaining no more
than sky any owner’s footprints,
waits, undiscoverable. Are we
so certain we haven’t wasted
precious life? What did we find
but the trip together? We gaze,
joining empty hands in a slack circle
with no beginning, no end.