Lazy clouds meander like legless sheep
across the blue-eyed sky, pencil-pointed
peaks jutting into it, mountains we

haven’t seen in ages, ones swathed
so long in snow it seemed that their
rocky faces would never reappear.

But there they are, the old reliables,
Sierra sentinels that range north
to south for 400 miles, the western

backbone of the Americas. We drive
through these mountains that one
of us used to traverse on foot,

that feel like dear friends, spreading
their craggy arms wide to embrace
the great bowl of lake where we

will land for a while, where we
will sit ourselves on a bench
overlooking the shore to watch

a trio of ducks unzip the impossibly
blue water in their wake. We find
ourselves transfixed, resting,

just happy to be here, as my
blue-eyed love likes to say, in this
place that will certainly outlast

us reliable oldsters, young in
geologic time, rocky ancestors
beaming the day’s last rays at us,

like proud grandparents
whose cherished descendants
just dropped in for a visit.