White Butterfly Ridge

This gentle wind bathes me
        on the ridge between Indian devotional songs
                                           and Tibetan trumpets.

         Charred stilts of forest
                       prop the tortured pines' soft foliage:
                                           sliver, green and rust.

This dream of lichened sandstone:
        so familiar; so alien,
        next to yellow path
        traversed by sandled feet
        beneath maroon robes
        and black rustle
        of wandering crow.