Ethan Pond, Mt Willey

“if you don’t believe in reincarnation, take a walk in the fucking woods.”

when breath vanishes from my lungs

kneels before my heart and the green

fountain rises before me and reincarnates

and reincarnates

the long isles lead to only one place

solitude

and it moves across my eyes as floaters

the darting personage the gauzy silhouette

of what is yet

just seeing the mountains draped

across the horizon, things once alive in me

offer their wrists, pollinate

new landscapes and eyes sit up,

eyes that have been snoring

and never in transit

never looking for anything or anyone

gawk at everything and every fallen tree

becomes home or humus

huge downed sails draped the

mountainside, splintered masts choked

by new growth, littered

the steep of Willey with a drowsy entropy

the static in the sky had never been so

obvious to me before, metamorphosing

between the shade and glare

of early may

as if branches of the sky showed their dominion

over branches of birch and their limbs stabbed

into earth only to regenerate into the next

growth, the next generation to penetrate

tomorrows low flying clouds and

make dew of them