Hiking Blue Mountain
By Steven Shelly

The day after the divorce,
I drive north, far out of town.
Thirty miles ahead, all I can see
is the flank of a blue wall, tectonic masonry
pushed up to guard the edge of a pitted plateau
half the length of the state.

Later, thighs aching from the climb,
I look back on where I came from:
carefully quilted fields and white frame houses
where husbands, wives, children
come home to each other at night.

I turn to the north:
endless waves of gray forest
drown the hills,
erase the blurred footprints
of homesteaders’ clearings.
Whole lifetimes of hope and effort
tumble into old foundations
overgrown with briars and weeds.
A hawk skates by on an updraft.
The cold wind in my face reminds me -
winter coming.
But still,
the wiry scrub pines
and the luminous parchment of birch trunks,
the lichen-dabbed granite
and the yellow leaves that half hide the moss,
and this colossal humped ridge
that coils out to the northeast horizon
comfort me just enough so I can start
down the dirt track it carries,
along with me,
on its great muscled back.