On the Mountain
On the mountain trail,
I stop, call beyond shoulder.
Footprints swerve cliffward.
Silence
Spread it into shocked air
Like the hurried hush chasing the librarian’s shush.
Move it through cloudlit shimmers
Like a large bird luffed up
From the lake’s tiniest loch.
If you come upon it pregnant, yearning,
Help it bear solace,
Sweet-favored natural child,
Blazing leaf-strewn trails.
Growing up in Baltimore, Mike Reis is a poet and environmental historian in Silver Spring, Maryland, who enjoys hiking and beachcombing. He has had poems published in Gargoyle, Lucille, Urthkin, The Archer, Laughing Bear, The Galway Review, Grand Little Things, the Amelia poetry postcard series, and Cabin Fever (the anthology of the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series), and has poems forthcoming in North of Oxford and Crossways.