The Wedding

The Wedding

Two days
Nine hundred miles
Hearts of Palm
In a can
Rehydrated wakame
Raw salmon cubed
on a old bag of plantain chips.
My running shoes
Dusted with sunshine
from desert running.

I kept passing turnouts
Maybe that one was a trail?
How many trails would I pass
before I slowed down
just to try one out?

The sign said 20 mile Beach
Sounded so good, yet,
Red and blue lights
Spinning Frantically
Like I was back in Vegas

I was on to the next trail
Another beach pullout
This time it was a man
Glued to his small black car
Standing there staring at me

Back on the hunt for a trail
I knew was there.
A trail that would give me
a view on top of a mountain.

And there it was:
Shooting up the mountain of gravel
like a groomed rock slide.
Perfect

My car key beneath a cairn
Nothing to bring with me
Nothing to hold me back
Just me and the Mountain,
Naked

Breathing like I was flowing
Through Vinyasa
Breathing, running
Unsure how far I would go,
Unsure how far I wanted to go

As I ascended,
Joy in the movement
Mirrored the ripening sunset
I was close to the top
When I saw the herd of nine white
Mountain Goats

They told me my story
Standing stoically
on the hillside,
Powerful.
And I was scared
for a brief moment

With a glance
they had me return
To the lake
To my car
To my possessions.

I ran down the mountain
A stone let loose from the hillside
Free to tumble and crash into its new
Home.

Around the last corner
A wedding party of four
Circled around a pastor
A Red Rose between her fingers
And now I was the goat
Wondering what was happening
on my Mountain.