LeConte '11

up and down the mountain








we hike more together today than do my usual groups,









the diversity of age and gender and ethnicity
expresses a way of how different we all are,
yet each rhythm moves
in sympathy and harmony with the others,
to express how much we are together,










up here on top of the mountain blue speaks to me today










whether in the fractured smooth rocks where I sit,
in the hues of cloud dappled sky
in its dissolving into the rippled ridges ranged before me,
they, like a rumpled bed, remember the tossing & turning
as plates dreamed hard against each other,
now the bed is all smoothed over
by millions of years of rain & life’s making,

on the way down the mountain
the vivid blue of the bluet whispers sharp to me time & again,








the loose rocks on the trail
and even spruce sap, weeping down a large trunk, still speak in blue,








for the soul to be so lifted up as I feel today
the body has to do the heavy lifting,
how ironic,
I simultaneously feel energized, and exhausted.

by Henry H. Walker
May 24, ’11