EQUINOX TUNDRA TRAIL

SONG OF JEREMIAH AT EQUINOX

Low sun, bleached grasses, fog.

Fresh snow on the mountain.

Equinox and what it brings

the mountain and the mail,

former student four decades

past, poet then and now,

bicycling with Roy Acuff

and the white speckled bird

from even further back.

Food and the mail, walking

tundra to Third Burroughs

trail taken from the map

enhancing intimacy,

burrowing, mountain

here and gone

and back again

that fast, a week into

what can't be grasped.

Did your childhood God

give you a Bible verse?

With mine, Ephesians 4:16,

it brought me so far

(but don't get above your raisin')

and multiplied like loaves

into a card game containing

the Ace of Clubs. Confronted

with holding or folding

I wrapped them for the vicar

as a gift. Without confession

or instruction, free-bird

flying. Young people

wound in chains

of sorrow and steel

boarding Swift Air.

Jim Bodeen

20 September-1 October 2019