Somewhere over Silver Plume, a hawk
stoops toward a rodent in the underbrush;
the mountains are green, the small streams rush
with new snowmelt; it’s hard not to be mawk-
ish—nature needs and hates our idle talk
about its beauty. Here in the hotel hush,
the window facing sunset’s westward blush,
I ward the door against housekeeping’s knock
and kneel into this newly legal prayer
to these foreign numina; they are displeased
and I, untethered, terrified, become
the mouse beneath the raptor-crowded air;
unlike a god, a bird can’t be appeased;
I squeak; it wheels; I freeze: immobile; dumb.