Bristle Cone White Mountain Meditation
Alive in thin breath,
winded and windy with
quick pace of chest;
always prevailing winds within the wind.
Ear wind scours noise,
chisels and fine-tunes voice.
Hands, the better ears,
release voice that wind steals
and shoves into
wrinkles of land;
a gift to the insects that keep us clean.
Mouth opens again,
wind grabs before sounds form,
plunges and stuffs utterance
back to where it came from.
That’s not how trees talk it says.
Lay the palm of ear
on scoured tracks of trunk,
fissures of skin,
2,000 years of living,
let fingers flex into trails of that life.
Shed weight to the wind sweep.
Seep into the crags of its time.
Hands, how does wind say heart,
heart, how do we hold
our brief moment of one.
Laura Winter’s recent collection of poetry, Cloud Pavilion, is a folded book published by Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, 2021. Her borderlands collaboration with photographer Terri Warpinski was recently on exhibit at the Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene, Oregon. She loves to be out in the elements and amongst the trees.
Header photo by Galyna Andrushko, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Laura Winter by Brad Winter.
