By George Steele

This is no place to feel hemmed in,

weighed down, or wary,

though the old trail past Pine Orchard

winds a darkling way through boughs

that shaded Aaron Burr,

another who learned the trade of living

through the winter into early spring.

I keep moving toward the outlook

where the Mountain House once stood.

Paired names of lovers

and their years remain

locked in the granite’s grip,

and I call out to those

who can no longer hear

a line or two of Lorca’s

on that empty Catskill slope—

with a breeze coming up

as soft as woman’s breath

from the Hudson far below.

I find the fog has stolen

both the sun and remnant moon;

the silver of the water’s lost from view

in the same cloud of forgetting.

I could turn away,

wander back toward Mary’s Glen,

where early blooms have drawn

the first blood of new morning.

but I’d rather wait the haze out here,

earning what may fall to me

when the hour of unknowing ends.