We are not adapted to high altitudes

antlers don't sprout from our sapient heads.

Frozen fingers milk the mountain—

         this amber comes of spilling tea.

Why inhale sky's ultramarine, I ask Mallory

who says what a ghost normally says,

           sulfur and obsidian.

Snowdonia, the church steeple, Flanders Field.



I ask if the peak was more bittersweet

than her departing kiss. But I can answer that one

as an opal engagement is crushed to dust. A lonely track.

           Try breathing in time's element

if you have no church and do not think god personally

looks out for George. Believe as the mountain's lover

           to get an idea of it

tendons pulsing where wings would have been.