Sea of Trees

This week, our prompt was to mistake something for something else.  The last week has been a blur -- another wonderful year of The Napa Valley Writers' Conference came to a close; and our family got away for a last vacation in the Sierra Nevadas where we hiked in Squaw Valley, swam in Lake Tahoe and then river rafted on the American River.  What a blur of fun.  This draft is a mediation on all of those activities folded together. 

Sea of Trees

On the granite lip of the wide valley

I mistook the wind breathing through tall pines
for the sea.  Waves of thin green needles.  Drum
of heart's chord. The loosening shale
underfoot. At valley floor there is a
river where rocks pillow beneath waves. Dive
in. Find relief in the ache of cold but 

map the threat of sieves -- those shadowy ghosts
that pull you under granite's tongue.  When the
boys ran through the forest they had transformed.

Sway of kelp. Bars of light that penetrate

the deep. Their bodies shimmering like aspen.
With each step we have less water, fear, weight.
Sit down. Wait. Let the sea of trees cover you in their fir.