BREAKING THROUGH CRUSTED SNOW

Breaking through crusted snow
in the woods surrounding your place
sugar pine and Doug fir you’ve taken care of
more than half your life

not once not every time we sink
suddenly a comedy routine laughter
and we feel our way onto the surface again
no longer solid ground no more

the illusion of easy going
whatever we were saying about our lives our loves
we keep walking till we reach the creek
a runnel snaking through trees and brush

icicles reach into space along white feathered edges
snowmelt you say by early summer gone
how you discovered that first hand
setting up the tipi trusting

the sound of water to see you through
now that memory’s marked by stones
the pit fire circle’s enduring shadow
and we climb from there to the clearing

where your propietary neighbor
placed a grey wing of bleached dead fall
on a grand uprising of rock
a found monument or more quietly

a lichen-covered sentinel a boundary marker
taking our eyes
to the snow-capped Siskiyous across the valley
how we stepped through now and then to reach here

laughing each time laughter we knew
would fade and die if every step
were to break the rhythm
and pull us through an untenable trail

pull us again and again
into endless snowdrift
instead we’re just wet around the ankles
a couple of guys in our sixties

we can laugh as we step out on the surface
and head back
we can forgive the unpredictable
so sparingly measured out

and we can be forgiven for thinking
the uncertain layer of snow in late spring
is the ground
until we ask what is the ground beneath