for Mark Irwin
Millions of years had sketched the grit
of umber and ochre in the sandstone walls
we hiked between. We had just met.
“It feels good being you,” you said,
your hands burrowed into the pockets
of my borrowed coat. Every leaf-
stripping gust in that high bright
swept through us, and the trickle of a creek
kept nicking at the trail. The gray roots
in the photo I took look like emergent
mastodons. “Jade,” you said and stopped
to pick up a stone and offer it to me.
“You could make something.” Its green round
in my palm, I felt for what it could become.
