Lighting Incense 

I sit, morning coffee cup in hand. 

Weathered mountain slope ahead. 

Mountain goats teeter high above. 

The goats seem steady. I am a bobbing bee  

searching for that single blossom  

in a vast expanse of Glacier meadow flowers. 

Can the solidness of mountain, jagged rise,  

dots of rangy pines, absorb the restlessness  

wreathed about my hectic head? 

Breath of Life, you greet me in this morning breeze,  

which tugs my hair, blows thoughts like clouds;  

I feel less than one of your single breezy breaths. 

A speck of person, lost in fretful thought,  

at the base of Rising Wolf, this massive mountain.  

At this moment, this is all I have or am. 

Yet goats, hawks, eagles winging their massive rounds,  

earthbound specks like me, myself, 

are all inspired by your breath. 

My living flesh is flesh impressed 

by all I’ve tasted, witnessed, walked. 

This Rising Wolf is now impressed in me. 

Will I grow roots like the mountain: solid, resonant  

with being? I could weather sturdily the sortings of this life! 

In you, oh, my mountain top, 

my speck of life feels for the moment good and safe.  

Fueled by this uncommon meal,  

washed down with camp stove coffee,  

I begin again. Let this prayer,  

like campfire smoke, rise up.  

I teeter, like the goats, in you.