The Sentence

I climbed a mountain and the air constricted breathing—

the terrain of the free spirit, that creature

so dedicated to surmounting that the mountain,

its hanging glacier, its granite slabs cut through

by the trail, its heaps of rocks blocking reasonable

access to the turquoise lake beneath, its wildflowers

with their fraying lackadaisical paintbrushes,

went by in my eyes so quickly I never truly left

the not-yet-turning aspens, carved by local lovers

who loved themselves so much they stayed right

there with their knives until they finished their names.