You set a stiff pace, Regula,
calves pistoning uptrail ahead.
Slow down. Before dawn yesterday
already halfway up
zigzag stitching switchbacks through the snow
you left the men behind. Below,
they charged the icy slope head on,
stairclimbed twenty steps and stopped,
bent double, breathing hard,
and lunged uphill again like elk in rut
floundering, while you broke trail above them
in methodical traverses,
crampons scrunching crust ice zip zip
like a sewing machine,
summited and descended, passing them still
climbing—and laughed, telling the story
back at Horse Camp, barely noon.
No call to hurry now, though. Look
how long it takes the creek
to make the meadow, slowly layering
bedrock with a sediment
of sand and silt, how many summers
linger in the sunny slab
of turf laid down beside it,
how soft its bed against your dozing cheek.