PROGRESS ON WHITE MOUNTAIN

Going up as a lucid poet
through separate hills
yet being muted in caves
of the buried Vermont crevices
by arriving early travelers
on first iced snowy peaks
that all look alike
in colorful fleeced jackets
with my own binoculars
yet abandoned in my pilgrimage
as repetitions of morning light
open a witnessing hunger
of promised goings over
spying a caught speckled fawn
spiked near the bushes
needing a rescue in a clump
of entangled Maple trees
shading my blinding eyes
brushing through a tall wilderness
conversing with November's body
of west winds whipping my back
between bands of rains
in a cloudy forecast
motionless in a landscaped shot
by leaning on a scraggly boulder
as my adolescent scout memory
returns in a daily litmus divide
of my own cross examination
when opposing forces
crash your body releasing
over the minor monitors
of our own ego egging us on
emerging to bluff our way
in a metaphysical anguish
when we silence the gliding
of an early embodied journey
in a lonely intimation
of our fast footfalls
on this frosty Fall hike
carrying my bundles of water
and brie cheese baguette
up these White mountains
with only the song bird
in the cleft of the rock
waiting for his bread.