some bears wake in winter
to snow and stone –
too soon and alone
a dense isolate against the gray
I imagine the great shaking
of sleep from fur –
the unconsidered solitude
the dark, inviolate grace
the huff and shudder
of breath and muscle –
and then the moving forward
into pale emptiness
of necessity, resolute
© Sarah Whiteley
I wake before the wrens
so that I can hike
alone up the rise
and watch the gold
of new light arrive
and each time
there is a pleasure
in its crunching
beneath my feet like
bright, brittle ice
© Sarah Whiteley
© Sarah Whiteley
high above the canyon, the bumblebee wears its band of orange as it slips into the lips of the lupine
I have clamored up the steep creek, braving the slickness of rocks and roots for this spoon of solitude
up here, I am as anonymous to the wind as fierce-clinging heather – alone with ballads of bees and fresh as new nothing
© Sarah Whiteley
I’m slowly adjusting to my return to “civilization” after an adventure in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Mostly I am trying to hold onto that feeling of space and freedom for a while longer, but more posts about my experiences are sure to follow in the coming weeks. And for the first time, I journaled my experience with the help of a little weather-proof notebook my brother and his wife brought me on their last visit. Very handy!
I cannot be the abstract
the city asks of me
I cannot maintain the grind
of teeth, of grime –
the hot seconds stuffed
into dull hours
when I do not go out,
the ghost of going out
rises within and whispers
of how the November woods
still smell of autumn –
of how the sleeping lake waits,
placid with the mountains
etched upon her face
© Sarah Whiteley
“Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.”
― Jim Harrison
the trick is to rise up
with the mountain,
and not to bring it
down beneath your feet
not all who wander
will understand this
and for this reason,
I tell no one the way
and keep the starred
avalanche lilies
for my own selfish
roaming self
© Sarah Whiteley
nowhere seems a good place to go –
the sort of place where you could dip your feet
in the creek and finally come up for air
where the silver underbellies of leaves
roll upwards to welcome the rain
where the first creature I might see
might be a solitary raven
and no one but he would even attempt
to talk to solitary me
nowhere’s as good a place as any
to look for the things that don’t ever
intend to be detected,
which is all right since nowhere’s only ever
in the looking and never in the found
© Sarah Whiteley
when air grows heavy and tired
from too long falling,
day’s last birds will dive down
and in rising, shake it out before them
something, at least, is vibrant
is the message beaten out by wings
when you are lost, find stone that will
hold sun with radiant stubbornness
and if you lose your voice,
seek out wide swathes of grass –
for it’s grass that sings when
all other songs have gone
© Sarah Whiteley
that August in Livingston,
we meant just me
and the small dog tracing
the bends in the river
into the far edge of afternoon
one of us thinking of rolling
ourselves into the landscape
for keeps just for the peace,
the other enthralled
by sudden bursts of magpies
all these years after,
I never did find the right shade
to fade into and can’t shake
the sense of going the wrong
way against the river now
as if home had quietly
washed itself downstream
and settled on a sandbar –
lopsided and forsaken
© Sarah Whiteley
out here the rain and your book
are my only companions,
and the only thing that matters
is the campfire
and keeping the sparks (bright,
living) from too-close legs
where fabricated light cannot reach
solitude is no longer secondary,
but breathes with my breath,
and pauses in the dark –
intending everything,
but only later
— much later
© Sarah Whiteley
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