i know a hill, gray-rocked and wooded,

i know the tone of it, contrived by her ladyship

to interrupt cadences, turn a sure step

into a slick stumble, a jar to the bones,

knocking the ego into the ravine below—

the creek-bedded, buck-brushed, vipered,

possum-hollowed wilderness, where 

unseen eyes behind trees and overhead

cast spells o'er the disorienting 'scape,

turning west to north, south to east, 

realigning itself to suit itself—its lichened self,

its crusted self, its eons of self. i am its witness

and victim. i am its addict, a woodland junkie,

a vibram-soled, uncompassed, stumbler of hills.