My corduroy road

Stiff with a dull ache,

my bones take their time towards the door.

I choose the corduroy road- out by the bogland.

Biding my mountain climb~ instead,

I near the barren terrain; where in first glance

is seen as plain- in short grass.

But aside, a whispering breeze heard shows a closer look;

a muddy pool stained, water dark with rain.

Tears dropped; blighted leaves, curled~ overlay the bedrock.

As toiled fragments of a summer long gone, still circle.

There, along the edge, the Lodgepole glares down the rising marsh.

While fissured bark of a Cottonwood peels back,

avoiding the pale cast of abandoned remains.

For beneath the surface lies the deluged umbrage~foliage forgotten.

A distorted decay of recollections; silent, from the winter freeze.

Another Limber pine twists away, shaped by the wind; eroded on the peat.

~Jessi (image and poem)