Like a telescope backwards

We have not been abandoned here.

We plan our steps down the mountainside very carefully, always looking for the next stone to land on.

Stone, stone, stone.  We could make a pile and name it. Call it the hill of our remembrance.

Or maybe just Fred.  (Glen?)

(Someone suggested a slide.  It would certainly be easier on the knees.)

Flower grow from the cracks.

When I come back up the hill I am careful to have some sort of chocolate in my backpack. Heaven knows there could be an emergency.

Eggs, buffalo milk, bread.  Peas that the kids will shell, kneeling and giggling together.  Unzipping the pods.

Sometimes I want the whole earth to be small enough that I could sit on it, like an egg.  It is too beautiful for me, and there are the bells on the donkeys, ringing again.  Every piece of clover hurts, every patch of moss, small flowers. I don't know their names. Oh the distance, the peaks should soften, and I would lay my head down.