It’s as if I encounter this terrain again for the first time, plucking new stories from the dry grass, lifting them into the sunlight for his scrutiny.

We move through passes that constrict between cliff-faces, or haul our feet over plateaus, and everything turns into an act of translation – my reward only small payment and in landscapes that exhaust themselves daily the consolation of his company.

All the while, I seem to navigate a second territory concealed within the first: ebb tides and rock shallows of moods – sudden here the manic enthusiast, there the chronic invalid, now the snuffer-out of candle-flames, half visible in gloom.

Last night, in a dream, my hand softly presses into the small of his back and we climb and climb and climb – just one more mountain, one more mountain, one more mountain, one more…


                                    fugitive
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