Poems from a Friend - A Pure Blue Flame Where the Hawks Go

A Pure Blue Flame Where the Hawks Go

After the snows on the next warm day there were the solo hikes along the old logging trails with a lunch of cheese and crackers and ham stuffed into a satchel slung over the shoulder. Where the trails go on the sides of the hills the snow melts and runs down like a clear brook and if you pause to bend down to it you can hear the water going over the rocks and falling onto itself. It’s wet going and sloppy at the low parts but the low parts are where the sun doesn’t come so it’s cooler and the air feels heavier because of the smell of earth and pines.

Up high along a ridge there is a pond where it’s hot in the afternoon and nice to lay about without a shirt and feel the wind across your chest like it was summer. There are tracks everywhere at the water and you’d even think you heard fish jumping but it would only be snow dropping from the young pines bowed over the edge of the pool. After a while everything would get lazy and hot and sleepy after eating and sketching or writing, and laying down on your back in the grass sleep would come and from way off a shrill whistled note and maybe you dreampt it and maybe you didn’t but it was there in your head and out over the high pines you’d feel something soaring and looking up through the pines you’d know the sky was a pure blue flame where the hawks go.

Copyright © Horse of the Sun and Keith Haines 1999-2002. All Rights Reserved.