Western

Rolling through this thick

Walking bridges over streams clean, thinning air as we climb

Switchbacks of granite and soft earth

Whistling on the dark trails of sleeping pines

Some lay to the ground under thick, others watching time as it waits

Time is always waiting in the mountains

As we idiot away in awe, ambling

Snaking through and along the thin, winding stretches

Divides opening to the fall,  butter yellow in the Western Larch

Needles ready to fall

Dotting grey mountain reaching fingers of rock

Pulling me up to my spirits animal

Through tiny groves, marshy and green, mustard and dust

And the clicking hooves of the mountain goat is calling

Pheasant flutters in the trees warbling as it climbs in startle

Eagle Cap is beyond and the air is thin

Blue, soft, with jagged crevasse

I am weary good in this climb

My heart is full with hoof and my beloved Oregon

Patches of snow waiting for me

Peace is this wood, this land, this rock, this stream

And I remember my heaven is not beyond

it is here in Oregon

my home.  

The Skin

Lips stretching wide

Hello again

my mouth on yours

Kissing your air as you swallow mine 

Cliche of becoming one

Our need for sweet skin

I need this open ended game

Games of chance, fear, of happiness, loneliness

We all play this game

And we revel

Skin

I worship yours as we turn the world inside out 

You worship mine and I shudder in your delivery

bathing in you is my tactile delight

And your lips are so soft in this twilight bed

your face shines in my thighs 

I have known you so many times 

But you are an expert in this skin

You assimilate each and every inch

And I am addicted to your manna

As you are what I need 

Food, light, air 

All this skin

Full and brimming