Lone Pine on Sentinel Dome

No sentinels any longer
Originally uploaded by cortomaltese.

Lone Pine on Sentinel Dome


A                                        coiled rope
  tree                                like
     leans into wind,    on itself
             trunk curving

     straining to hear the melodies
         of other places:
            the weedy and salt
               exhalations
                   of oceans and deserts,
                      the chink, clatter,
               and clap of asphalt and steel,
                      the soft plink
                    of starlight
                         gleaming
                  in a distant window.

              The wind pauses.
                The tree straightens
               and looks across valleys, past rivers
             to other mountaintops of rock
           more barren than its own.