Up and up the mountain pass
inchoate streets of ghost,
fog-breath challenging headlights,
warnings:  Ice. Slow. Ice
Winding, winding, white, clay,
brown, stubborn bits of green,
all still but us in our winding,
puppy snug in the back, ignorant
of treachery in movement: a skid,
blink of eye, one sudden deer.
On arrival, several feet of snow,
two degrees: shimmering, marble, world.
In the distance, and eerily close,
those slow long mountains of
no beginning, no end, like a god maybe
or string of hump-back whales beached
by snow - and      all    that    sky -
surreal for sea-creatures, for land- .
Alien terrain, so somehow set,
like a frown or furrow upon the land,
the odd I'd loved for oddness,
from the blue shoulders a shuddering:
a human thing, tiny yellow light
like a trapped star, or cat's eye accusing,
or simply whispering from otherworldly silence:
it was you who went away.