Mt. Pilchuck
Mountain hemlocks gather
close and huckleberry bushes
blush this summit ledge.
The slab behind us fits our backs
in a perfect angle of repose.
Mt. Rainier a mirage to our right,
Baker floating to our left,
we’ve got what we came for—
an autumn presence of the past.
Clouds drift, and now we are looking
at Dome Peak beyond our knees,
oblique amidst its lasting snows.
At the foot of the peak, on Itswoot Ridge,
at the end of the Ptarmigan Traverse,
our son lay four months in the womb.
Now he is waiting in town
for dinner, well into his own traverse,
and we're up here among twisted hemlocks,
reclining with the pale green lichen
on this lap of sunlit stone,
still hungering for huckleberries.
