9 Ways to Locate the Ghost of Yourself in the High Sierra

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1. Press your ear to the trunk. The loggers, their mad, drunken songs.

 

2. Lightning storm, sugar pine, your head upturned, your mouth a fat bowl.

 

3. A girl curls into the little gap burned into a sequoia tree the way a bird sleeps a nest.

 

4. Translucent shrimp haunt the caves beneath your soles. Shout to them as you pass.

 

5. Locate the treeline by following the pika’s chirp.

 

6. Fire season and the smoke chokes your cough. Now the forest is in you too.

 

8. What happened to 7? He wandered too close to the river, swept into everlasting.

 

9. A turkey vulture’s wobbling balance on the air. Last night’s dinner still steams his mouth.