The sleeping bag is wet with dew

 

The sleeping bag is wet with dew

I’m warm enough
awake in fading starlight,
hint of dawn lifting roads,
strings of lamps among woven fields
sharpening as sky relentlessly brightens.
Hello, sunrise
from Mount Sugar, a modest mountain
but the best I’ve got.

This trail home I know by heart.
Here are your roses tangled pink as
your exuberance climbing a fence.

The dog remained all night on watch.
In the kitchen you wait with cold coffee
accepting that once a year
I climb a mountain by moonlight
testing a murmur, an atrial flutter
to view a dawn that will come
regardless of witness.

I say you could do better than me but
you say There are no hierarchies of love.
Ask any dog. The dog isn’t talking
but I saw sunrise from Mount Sugar.
Our hearts so strong, I swear.

……

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs—thank you editor Jeannie E. Roberts
Photo (from Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland, my beloved boyhood climb) by Bishal Regmi