by Dick Altman
Molas Pass, Southern Colorado
I’m hiking
where eagles soar,
eleven thousand
two hundred feet
above sea level.
Summer,
and I seek
to escape
the heat,
climbing
legend’s
Colorado Trail,
amid peaks,
of the Rocky
Mountains,
veiled.
The forecast,
a brilliant sunny day.
The reality,
smoke,
past summits
rivering,
thicker than
I’ve ever seen,
rendering
cloud high’s
vistas,
now grey
and shadowed,
nearly invisible.
Breathing
a struggle.
The source,
I discover,
Grand Canyon,
turned into
an inferno
of wildfire—
after a paucity
of man/
money/machine,
so it seems,
lets it burn,
for weeks
unyielding.
I recall how calm
was my visit
to the canyon’s
North Rim,
to edifices
historic,
and surrounding
forest,
the blaze
destroys.
And here I am,
atop a mountain,
lost
in their scorched
essence.
The dense smoke
drowns my spirit
in ghostly grief.
Vultures circle
overhead.
Marmots dive
for their holes
in bands of
rock.
A meadow
of yellow daisies,
out of nowhere,
unfurls like magic.
I push upward.
Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, New Verse News, Wingless Dreamer, Blueline, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 250 poems, published on four continents.
