“Where you headed?” he asks, leaning on a walking stick. “North or South?”
It looks like I belong there,
full bearded face
showing the miles of accumulating weeks
as though I started out in Georgia.
Twenty years ago I climbed the same trail
clean shaven,
not realizing I could sanctify my steps by whispering Psalms.
It would not have looked much different then,
the mountainous forest changing too slowly, imperceptibly
like swollen clock hands.
“North,” I answer.
“Never knew what a beautiful country this is” he says,
departing for our eventual reunion at the summit.
“It’s not where we come from but where we’re going, right?”
Tragic how a man will search a whole life for his own heart
and never find it where he could have found it
on the same trail.