Hamilton Mountain Access

Access this light-chocolate path,
caramel, peanut butter, chocolate
chips, little milk; drab growth,

spider plants tumbled slowly out
of the top of a project volcano’s
uneven brown. Red flecks, too (those

pepper chips go right through me)
around the edges where one wheels
around, goes right back down
(again) if you’re (one is) complacent,

pacing, yourself (whisky black in glass,
cliff-color bag shifting down on
dirt-mat) along a range of staggering,
hewn, barely there, only to emerge up,

there! sometimes by a cancer center
or perhaps back (again), in a circle
at the mountain’s prow, coasting
or shuddered to another halt. Walls

taper into other sun, look grey up
here. Think geologic time, Thunder Mountain,
Frosty: each go-kart cut, odd smack, tears,
carves these runnels, ugly, rills still.

Header photograph © Jason D. Ramsey.