the long way down with you through tangles of rhododendron poison ivy towering hemlock ancient poplars we can't get our arms around cold bathing raucous river broken leaf-brown mossy-gray and mirror-black where you stacked silent sentinels of round rocks among afternoon shadows and salamanders wet-red. we traced trails of ants and slept bare-soled and I couldn't wait to get home to a soft bed but now my worn soul treks the long way down to the water and the smooth stones and the rhododendron branches that we grasp to lift our bodies from slippery rocks against gravity. clad in sky-skins our carefree ghosts again measure trees and balance rocks with warm hands. we inhabit in memory those translucent forms erasing distance, dissolving time, when we desire