you return to the mountain
across faint trails,
there may only be a hill.
Now it stands
with blurred edges
in the billowing clouds
but is still too soft
to be considered
a fact,
to be etched
in the blue and green atlas.
But still you follow
the snow melt stream
as it diminishes
from the source,
cutting striped canyons
into the skin
of your globe;
the forgotten foundation
of expressions.
-Robert L. Jackson III
