My restless adolescent son refuses

to hang out on this lush alpine meadow.

Declines to count clouds with me. Cares not fair

skies never last.  As a teen, I backpacked one hot

August day with a church group up steep

mountain trails from our camp’s deep valley lake

to a carved tunnel through an arete

to be confronted by black clouds, sleet,

and bitter wind that snapped the tarps

we bound around ourselves until dawn.

All this where he now stands. And Dad’s

so-what story? Lost in a rock-hard deep past—

Tectonic subduction, overthrust fault,

all shale and limestone, none of it basalt.

Gerald Wagoner is the author of When Nothing Wild Remains, (Broadstone Books, September 2023), and A Month of Someday, (Indolent Books, March 2023). Gerald’s childhood was divided between Eastern Oregon and Montana where he was raised under the doctrine of benign neglect. He’s lived in Brooklyn, NY, since 1982.