A lifetime of giving up hope
has a way of offering preparedness
for the acceptance of death,
training for a triathlon of loneliness
and trudging and no-help-when-you-need-it.
Sonoma could have swallowed me whole.
Boar tracks dried single file
arching toward redwood oblivion.
When there was but one set of footprints…
Maybe God is a boar, a pregnant sow
leaving those prints toward the
Best View, far more important
than the way out. Isolated stumps,
dots on a grid, planned. Intentional.
My scream echoed hundreds of feet
down that cliff, spread across the lake
just waking with spring, crawling and threading
toward the Greater. It left me
with a primal power amplified
by solitude, by loss, by resignation.
Fingers struck wide, arms pulled
high, feet flat with a boar print
in between. Nothing to do but keep moving.