Mountains Will Break Your Heart, If You Let Them

by Trish Saunders on Nov 20, 2015

Go, little one, stake your tent in temple grass.
Tread ruthlessly on hominid bones
ground to powder eons ago,
fine as the cornsilk compacts
of your grandmothers.

Scrape your sandals on fragile flowers
that cover the lava fields,
smothering bones of the iiwi,
alala and o’o birds.

Their age is finished.
They know it.
Trample now, while you still have time.

—
Trish Saunders divides her time between Honolulu and Seattle. Her poems have been published in Gnarled Oak, Silver Birch Press, Off the Coast and Right Hand Pointing.