poem

 Yellowstone

And just like that, the end of vacation

If you wander around a geyser basin

Beyond the boardwalk you risk breaking through

A surface crust thinned like April ice.

Burn your foot to the bone.  All that winter planning wasted.

In the clouds atop Mt Washburn

The calderic view takes your breath away

But my son fears that might be a sign of altitude sickness.

Summer too is rationing its oxygen

As back to school sales are announced 

Ten folders for a dollar or vice versa I cant remember 

Bullet proof backpacks, two for one, BOGO or FOGO. 

Special pens, nifty erasers. A lunchbox that bends. 

Before you know it, it’s fall, then winter,

Then spring bearing baskets of transient abundance. 

Seasons now are processional

Like funerals and my name is a flag

On a car following everyone

To the cemetery. 

Everything ends up passing, then circling back

While we maintain strict unidirectional vectors

Just waiting for the day when the ground gives way

And we fall into whatever dissolves us.

Spring summer fall winter

Winter spring summer fall

The rude cycling of ageless seasons 

Oblivious to the years and decades adding up

For everyone else

A lifetime runs away, finds someplace to hide

Amidst a herd of bison meandering across 

The Grand Loop Rd backing up traffic for miles 

And everyone honks as I get way too close

I’ve grown tired of running, of everything changing 

Here, I’ll make my final stand. 

Take a picture of me taking a picture

Of the Yellowstone River 

Winding through the Hayden Valley

And put it in a family album

Grandkids will flip through, absent-

Mindedly killing time 

Before Thanksgiving dinner.

You’ll never need to see me again. 

But you can if you want to. 

By then it will always be raining

Or never raining 

The leaves will have stopped changing 

Or it’s the year they fell and never grew back—

The insolent trees

Bare and stark and black

8/10/25