We slipped loose of the silvery Sandon Valley

with the blistering clang of your '99 Pathfinder.

I was burnt out on late August

and trying to use up the sunlight

as we wound the heavy green of the truck

up the old logging road.

All around us the walls of mountains were swollen

with the coats of old forest. All the edges

of peaks tailored with needles

of pine, the tops of trees pinned to the sky.

At the wheel, you weathered the storm

of rock grinding beneath tire

and as we rode the rolling waves of potholes I thought,

           (so, this is the turbulence of empty space)