Coming to cottonwoods, an orange rockshelf, and in the gully an edging of stream willows,

I made camp and turned my mule loose to graze in the dark evening of the mountain.

Drowsed over the coals and my loneliness like an inner image went out and shook hands with the willows,

and running up the black scarp tugged the heavy moon up and over into light,

and on a hill-thorn of sage called with the coyotes and told ghost stories to a night circle of lizards. Tipping on its handle the Dipper unobtrusively poured out the night.

At dawn returning, wet to the hips with meetings, my loneliness woke me up and we merged refreshed into the breaking of camp and day.

Note: The day was spent in the tiresome business of buying stuff, swimming among the endless shoals of Christmas shoppers. There is no worse place to shrivel the human soul than the typical multi-chromatic American mall (which makes me wonder if Whitman would have been able to include it in his sprawling American catalouges?) To compensate, I am in bed reading poetry, and this poem made me remember my own multi-day hikes in the Appalachians. I should head back there one of these days, to howl with the foxes and wade through rhododendron "hells".