Life-Zones on the Great Divide
You warn your daughters to tread carefully
through the altitude-stunted spruce.
For just above us bighorns are dropping lambs,
and here we must maintain the equilibrium
through attention to detail.
When the high trails shift, loosened by subtle change,
boulders crash by,
the ground quivers like the belly of a cow elk.
On the slope below, at dusk,
the mule deer appear lavender-grey,
where living with uncertainty
has made their step delicate.
Your daughters move down this Great Divide
and find the difference in life-zones
a matter of the obvious.
You tell of the balance to be found at each level,
how at the end of the day
it becomes necessary to size things up.
On this boulder field
the pika's urine is crystalline.
Pick up a lichen
and ten years breaks apart in your hands.
(from High Country Solitudes, 1997)