“Nothing’s the same low”
Other-sides of mountains
and empty
puddle valleys
rend cloud tides
apart in lace shard
summits,
wine-darked and airy crucible
. we stagger and throw our petrified agony
over obelisk anxiety, winter-picked
firefly-minds scattered across uninterrupted glacier-fields
monochrome razed
descents last cinder-colored
light stroke and secure flat spaces
Gore-Tex and Arc’teryx and
heavy sleep
wind purged apostates always coming back,
the note on the fridge says “the emptiness of the planet
. can’t be escaped behind any number of walls”
Nathan Caines is a student and mountain guide in the western United States.
His work has been featured in the 34th Parallel, the Bitchin’ Kitsch and Maudlin House.
