Into the foothills:
individuated and
intentional, like tumuli,
poised in geometric solitude;
yet reiterant—
battologizing in every direction
like a lavish obsession;
Over the clatter of lava scree,
down stress-cracked arroyos
polyped with balsamroot,
astride dustracks canine and human,
over roots of gnarled fir that
knuckle the trail like black fingers.
Into the foothills, then,
you run—
without optimism,
suspecting all summits false,
enduring your own shadowy weather—
unending systems of shifting mentalese;
Overtaking strangers wordless
and passing through strands of huddled pine
sunk with errant shafts of yellow light,
networks of crows bruiting your
course in the canopies above.
With ragged breath and aching limb,
you are lifted and lowered,
left to pursue protracted arcs,
like the practitioner of an esoteric ritual,
like the epigone of a mathematical formula.
Compacted and sunbaked into pavement
the path rattles talus and tibia,
climbs the fickle architecture of your spine,
and delivers spoonfuls of annihilation.
Into the foothills, then,
you are running—
not speaking,
but hanging on
the susurrus of the breeze,
listening intently,
trying to hear the urgent call of the world.
Jimmy Latin is in his fourth year of Honours English at Concordia University (Montreal). He writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
