Years of lift and scrape,

slip and crack,

the Siskiyou mountains.

My gold hunter ancestors

haunt the ridge,

darken the slope. 

See them rise,

hear the thunder of the peaks.

A blackbird passes above

to where the world

moves over the horizon,

the upper air,

thinness beyond breath,

shifting bodies,

many voices.

With beating wings

they slip away,

and the sun runs cold in Scott valley

where a frozen bird lies,

and seeds sleep uneasily,

unsure of their time.