On Monday, a trip up the mountain to look at aspen carvings by old-time Basque sheepherders, or cowboys, hikers, campers, people just driving through.... The aspen were in autumn display.
Strangers in Paradise
The three of us wandering through
gold of an aspen grove in search of carvings
on smooth white bark. Etch-marks widen
over time, the tree’s dark-scab healing
makes deciphering difficult. The messages –
numbers, dates, initials,
and words in a language we can’t read.
Carvings of creatures whose outlines shift
by point of view; you see a beetle,
I see a horse. We’re aliens in this grove,
ensorcelled by gold of aspens
we only visited in greens of summer
or leafless winter. We lose our way,
find trees that eluded us before –
a grove that’s all one family of tree,
the old dying and new sprouts rising
to the next snowmelt season.
~ Taylor Graham
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