PAUL MILLS

The Sierras Animal cities crowded to deep time, Jointing and unsheeting out of the sea. Flowers of the sea whose petals changed To mica where they fell.

Nothing contracted from softness is alive But moves towards a region we can’t reach.

That scarp, down From Sierra ice In setting light on Nevada, Our camp in the White Mountains, The road to the valley winding Out to some high empty place.

I watch the moon’s black hub increase its shine From fading cones of snow, Out of this world it’s daylight The stars grow. Three hundred miles south of the Humbolt River Whose trail dried into salt Trees are still the oldest things that live Twisted to the rock with iron threads.

Shone out on the dark my flashbeam ends

The children wriggle and dream in their blue tent

That eyes ever opened is an occurrence No less than an accident of occurrence.

The mountains are ridged like cone bristles opening In the sun. It’s still early. The seam Of our air is blue-layered, soft Fine-grained rock for miles, untreacherous, A breathable piece of time. Our shoe-prints Are loose-scuffed in the gravel, Not yet squeezed to marble.

Heat on bark flecks In my eyes

The granite unfinished. In a million years all Echoes, all daylight is the same. Landslides of light, Aspen, mountain sage, ice from dislodged clouds.

Today we’ll see what the sun does south of here, The road, the minutes contracting in seams Behind us, to memory. Each various

Second fused to sulphur, to creosote, Vanished behind distances without shade.