AT this high bridge begins silence, even
as the whitecapped water beneath
runs against the rocks and fill the ears
with its white roar; it is not the sound

of human trivialities, of men
running down women, or women turning aside
with embarrassed smiles from men,
or the sound of the pulling of tabs,

ripping of aluminum, or the assorted
purrs and rumbles of fire along the pike,
wrapped in steel. He gathers his old friends,
space blanket, matchsafe, whistle, map,

cheese, bread, water bottle, and poncho,
and stuffs them in his tattered fireman's vest.
This is a new place, but deduction finds
the lightly traveled path, snaking across

a landscape of indissoluble stillness.
The vine maples have yet no leaves,
and the moss-lined nests in their jointures
contain no eggs. There are times

when the tall firs on these ridges
creak and suffer like a forest of masts
in a wind-swept harbor: this is no such time.
He has been used to walking alone in the forests;

has walked among peaks dawn-rosy
at sunrise, or hunkering under the wuther
of rain-heavy winds, or under a smother of clouds
among tree-trunks. Now, of a sudden,

he stops, and puzzles at his alienness.
What can be different? There are yellow violets,
trilliums, oxalis. He gathers moss and horse lettuce,
a couple of conks, and pebbles, yet the connection

is missing. His heart leaps cold in his chest,
and his pulse rattles. On an impulse he whirls
round on his track, examines
the trail behind him and a hillside of sword fern

silences. The silence is plural, but how
do you read absence? What does he not see?
Bear? Cougar? It is a feeling one has
when the sights of the rifle are trained

on the back of one's neck. Often in life
he has felt this, but only in cities
and the lifelines of cities, those rivers
of asphalt and their pageant of strangers.

He must establish himself here, he feels;
some introduction has been omitted. He searches
his pockets and locates his old pipe,
a treasure remaining from another life;

it goes where he goes, though he thinks of it seldom.
There is little tobacco in the bowl, but enough,
and he chooses a bit of the mountain,
a leaf of kinnikinnick, to add. Self-consciously

borrowing culture, he aims the pipe
at the four points of the compass, the grey sky,
the soundless earth at his feet, and sits,
fumbling with the lid of his matchsafe.

Fire lit, he sends smoke quietly aloft.
It rises uncertainly, then finds the drift
of cold air sliding downslope into evening.
Whatever seemed angry seems to him angry still,

but gives way before the smoke of offering,
and makes with him a capful of truce: he will not
be eaten today, it seems, or tripped up, or smashed.
He will not name the place, "place where I broke

my leg" or "place where I lost my spirit."
In return, he must finish his hike now
and not soon return. Replacing the horse lettuce,
conks, moss, and stones, he wryly smiles

a little: if this is superstition, so let it be,
he says to himself. We do what we have to do.
The silence, which he'd thought a hieroglyph
of an unknown tongue, nods and agrees.