Separation

Mind the gap they said and I didn’t. There’s a storm wind but no storm. Children play in the distance

or maybe fight. Don’t mind me I murmur to a deer trotting past while I type this on my phone standing still as a tree at dusk

just vibrating a little from a Swainson’s thrush on his yearly trip north. I’m mindful that everything human in this hollow comes from the gap between the mountains

but to the birds it’s all one ridge—a high way made of wind and forest. To mind the gap means to keep going.