Signal Peak

"That mountain is a veil...please don’t take winter from me."

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That mountain is a veil.
This side, the angles are laced with broken spruce, dotted juniper, barren sandstone,
Ailments we in this valley swallow, diseased metaphysics
Oppressing, oppressing,
                                                       until it snows.

Red cliffs no more than peek past their new blanket,
red slashes on a white sea,
red sin made a smile.

That mountain is a veil. I don’t want her to lift it for a kiss—
                                                        leave her be, please,
please don’t take winter from me. Speckled juniper is cyanide. 
                                                        I need her covered.

But I will die: That mountain is a veil. I know that
because when snow swathes her crags, if I look close enough,

                                                        if I feel after her,

I see Wordsworth’s Intimations barely cresting the other side of the mountain.

Pine forest.
Dense, pure, climbing that other side,
stopping at the peak,
yet always growing back there,

and when I’ll finally find myself on the other side of that veil,
immersed in the silence of the snow
in that quintessential woodland soul,
I myself
will learn to climb the veil once more.