SCULPTED GOLD

—St. John’s Wort, Jade Mountain

Through strange clouds and mist

like rain it descends

past proud heights of peaks

to the stones and scrub trees

where wild goats rear in heat

Stamen and pistil

lift life’s totems

toward blue sky and sun,

their fruited seeds borne on

in black bear scat

Through strange clouds and mist

midsummer’s gold

splays the highlands of fable and myth,

hillside stele of all that came before,

small starlike brilliance

Hormone-stirred

I seek the wind’s leopard skin

to outrun the tortured sickness of this human world,

to release

my own entrapment