The poem
The winds tear through Merced Canyon's boulder-choked gorge, stampedes muddy Moss Creek. Hoofed catastropes! I'll ride them all
crouched in these root-caves, surrounded by the purple-tinged bark of buttressed trunks in an unnamed grove. I'm tired of tales of the ground's cataclysmic quakes -
valleys bottomed out, pine trees tossed, cedar, oak, gusts snapping massive limbs, and the sudden rush of flame - fires grazing these old,
close-packed leaves. Spinning, zigzagging, burning back, surging, scorching every living thing. Roaring updrafts filling branches filled with cones. Ashes settling, smoking litter cooling
slowly. The air is dark with incense, charred stumps, blackened hollows and from this loud storm drifts chestnut snow, down from the quiet
canopy, each fleck smaller than a grain of flax, a cloud of hope released from tight cone scales opened by the heat, flurries of small, still, flat-winged Sequoia seeds.