SEQUOIA IN JANUARY

Mountain ranges always arrest me

Like long arms lunging

To gather me in and make me a prisoner.

So Sequoia was a natural

From the second I saw

Far enough
To take in the horizons –

Multi-faceted and sliced into slivers.

I became a happy hostage.

Icy wet tarmacadam

Defined the trip to the top,

As I swerved and swayed into the fog,

Driving my hope to break into clear air.

Then I turned to see the vapour from above:

Frosty pillows bulging

Like bumpy billowed binding -

As though I could roll across

If I was weightless –

Gleaming in the afterglow of a subdued sun

With neither time nor energy

To waste on heat.

The crags and crevices of steep black slopes

Stored sparkling snow in creamy caches,

Sending a shiver down my spine,

Reminding me of other alpine scenes,

Several continents

And many decades of memory away.

But Sequoia’s peaks

Protested their predestined paucity

In a blatant blast of biased

But plausibly prescient pleading.

Soon all around me were the giants -

Red and green and beyond big -

Their flared feet fixed

In the frosty flood of flurries

And set to stay stable as sedentary centurions

Or perhaps much, much longer.

Indifferent grey shade chilled the air,

Freezing precarious public paths

Made perilous by prints of frivolous feet.

Back down in the dampness of the misty air,

A sculpted coyote skulked and scarpered,

Its face full of something like guilt –

Culpability chiselled into its jawline -

Bashful blame blinking in its eyes –

Or perhaps it was facetious innocence.

Who knows how predators

Express such practical pretences?

At the bottom the stream

Roared into the town –

One of three rivers rushing loud -

As if already swelled by winter’s remnants.

Tourists ignored the frozen air

And snacked on ice cream.

Then they got warm by smoky fires

And sampled pizzas and tostadas,

Sipping sweet zinfandel from another valley.