Climbing Teapot Hill

Your whole future, your whole past, we tell each other, can slip between the folds of the cedar’s bark.

There is a white porcelain teapot centred on a stump wider than your arms can circle. Everywhere, white fog traps cedar and fir. The green of moss sleeps entire trees into jewel-tones. Sword ferns are still dizzy and dipping from a long winter. Your hair is wetter than wet and still the rain comes. Lady ferns kiss the feet of cedar. Even the path blurs …