Eggs have no business dancing with stones

~proverb

A wrong turn carries me far from the trailhead,
far from paved paths and ordered passages,
to where the grass surrenders with silent waves to rocky slopes,
and narrow ridges give way to root-filled climbs.
Blackbirds color in a lone cloud, crevices uncloister lizards.
Each footstep raises dust and doubt, an homily of stones.
In my intimate gait, I go on, surrounded by yellow poppies
scaling the jagged incline