Unseen

From that angle, the clear mountain water

seems to be a wavy, shimmering mirror,

refracting the image of a pinecone in the

image of the pinecone in the water on the

screen my finger just tapped to snap.

The spiky little tip looms before the mountain peak

in the background, a tower of circularly stacked

wooden shields arising from the waves, held together

by the hidden sap in the crevices between them.

I allow myself a satisfied grin, proud of the product

of my amateur phone photography.

“Tima! Mih poshlyi!” I rise from my knees as I hear

my dad’s voice calling me.

Pocketing my phone and attempting

to brush some dirt off my jeans -

a futile action due to the nature of moisture -

I head in his direction, and we begin on the

path back down the mountain.

The path takes us away from the pond,

sneaking its way through a scattered forest

growing on the surrounding rock, each

tree’s roots themselves sneaking into the

cracks of those boulders to find their life.

It dips into the fall line, a fold down the mountain,

the quickest way for water to descend and

thus the most eroded, the easiest to tread a path around.

As we trek downwards, my mind thinks

of the fold in the mountain,

the cracks in the stone,

the crevices of the pinecone.

Before I’d snapped that photo, we’d walked

around from the other side of the pond,

where adults relaxed on sunny boulders

while children splashed playfully below.

Some hikers took little picnics, calling

their kids back to let them sprinkle

the ground with breadcrumbs, drawing ants.

On that ground, slightly behind the fold

between two boulders, at the bottom of a

crevice created by cracks in a stone,

lay a dead mouse.

A tiny thing, soft, fluffy white fur,

neck oddly twisted between rocks.

As I walked away, down that mountain,

I thought of all the people that’d walked

right over that crack, the kids that had

hopped on it and run over it, squealing

with delight at their games.

When I’d been there, peering down at

that little mouse, I’d started thinking about

lines for a poem, lines long lost from my

thoughts but not the thoughts behind the lines,

those still remained.

I wondered just how many

people stepped on the canyon of the mouse

without thinking twice, never knowing what

little thing was under their soul.

How many more would come and go,

long after the line of ants that actually cared

(at least for the meal) came and went and left

nothing but little bones.

I wondered how many more would have noticed if not

for the confines of the crack; had it been on a path,

it probably would have been nudged away in disgust,

hidden from sight if not from the surface.

After all, not moments after standing up had

I myself stopped composing the poem,

forgetting about the mouse.

I’d moved on, and as I moved to the bottom

of the mountain my train of thought faded

and changed, and the mouse was forgotten

and still on and on I moved, until today

my fingers moving across this keyboard

raise this little hidden creature from

the crevices of my memory leave it

on this screen

for all to see.