I Will Wait for You

I Will Wait for You

I will wait for you there,
on the quiet bench
of a fallen tree
resting on the grass
near the riverbank
where the trail slips
silently into the
unknown
deepness of the
wood.
 
We can rest there
together and enjoy the view,
like the sunlit hours on the bench
at the Pinnacles,
or soothe our feet in the
cool waters of the stream
as we did that day in
Yosemite, descending from
the granite passes through high
Sierra meadows, listening to
past generations whisper their
secrets in the wandering lodgepole
pathways of time.
 
We will linger there, together again,
and the rustle of grass
in the summer breeze will
fold time
and you will stand with me
in the wild pass below Mt Hight,
and we will
bend and twist in the wind
like the krummholz
making a last stand
in the freezing fog at treeline,
the dancing of its branches
signing a message that few will
ever see and fewer still will
understand.
 
We will awake in the cold dawn of
Guyot, together now for the first time,
sharing those years
of discovery and New Hampshire
long before you entered my life,
then tumble forward as
time unfolds itself and flows
through Death Valley and
over the Sierra Nevada
one more time
as we come at last
back to our bench on
the fallen tree for a final
moment.
Then we will rise as one and
follow the well trod yet
unknown trail
into the ultimate forest,
a wilderness with no
boundaries,
where all things merge into
one.