Between Things

At 4200 feet

One can see both down and up.

Different trees.

Different people.

With history and goals unknown to us.

But speculating—

Breathing and friendship

And to feel blissfully small.

We packed no dinner

And split one drink.

We set two chairs deep in the woods.

Looked all around us

Through the thicket of bare trees.

Silver gray and ash gray

Platinum and graphite.

Bark knobbed and gnarled.

Splotchy and sanded uniform.

Evidence of woodpecker’s work

Everywhere.

Then we saw one, two, three

Different woodpeckers.

Like each other and not.

And another 14 different kinds of birds

Singing to the emerging full moon

And stationed on branches

Resembling alphabet letters.

Guessing with each other the resemblance

To shapes in our ordinary life.

We slept laid out in the bed of the truck.

We rose with the initial hints of daylight,

The first up.

Walked and walked and walked

And marveled at how close the trees

Were to bursting.

Sat in nodding silence

Looking through the tree tangle

For new signs we had missed

To help bring us back home.