Simple.

Chatham, Mount Tamalpais in the Fog, 2001

HARD TIMES

The other boot doesn’t drop from heaven.
I’ve made this path and nobody else
leading crookedly up through the pasture
where I’ll never reach the top of Antelope Butte.
It is here where my mind begins to learn
my heart’s language on this endless
wobbly path, veering south and north
informed by my all-too-vivid dreams
which are a compass without a needle.
Today the gods speak in drunk talk
pulling at a heart too old for this walk,
a cold windy day kneeling at the mouth
of the snake den where they killed 800 rattlers.
Moving higher my thumping chest recites the names
of a dozen friends who have died in recent years,
names now incomprehensible as the mountains
across the river far behind me.
I’ll always be walking up toward Antelope Butte.
Perhaps when we die our names are taken
from us by a divine magnet and are free
to flutter here and there within the bodies
of birds. I’ll be a simple crow
who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.

Jim Harrison