Even mountains need to rest from their work

of shouldering the sky, of bearing cumulous

buckets on the slanting yoke of treeline

where snow and ice teetered all winter.

So on this cloudless summer morning,

you crack your ridged back to release

tension from each knobby vertebra,

stretch out your rocky legs and cross

one green-timbered ankle over the other,

then lean back with hands behind your head

to admire the endless blue of this good view.

At some point you doze, and all I see are

bony elbows jutting to either side of your

barrel chest, a shadow of scrub grass

in the craggy folds of your armpits.

I watch your ribs expand, contract,

inhaling and exhaling sunlight as your

collegiate majesty welcomes Sabbath.

Amy Nemecek

July 2022