Dolly Sods

One more cup for the road – let’s
Stop by the huckleberry flats at Bear Rocks
On the way down the mountain
Fill our coffee mugs one more time with
The blue-black heart of mountain summer
Zip-locked away for the hot flat Texas winter

The trick of picking is to find the bushes
With the clustered blue berries so
One reach gets five, six, eight berries
Time out of mind, pickers with blue-stained
Fingers learned this, on the mountain top,
On the huckleberry flats at Bear Rocks

August – berrying time for millennia
Like the grey conglomerate, forever the bushes
Touched with flame, berries glowing yellow
Green, red, shining blue-black
Bears feeding in the head-high bushes
Stretching across the flats – then the people

Nameless people, first travelers to the continent, among
The red spruce, following the cool up the mountains
As the glaciers shrank back north

The History of Dolly Sods