I looked back at you like Orpheus looked at Eurydice.
I was afraid you would disappear, but you didn’t, though
the sun’s descent threatened to reduce you to a moving patch
of darkness. We didn’t expect to be out so late.

You were getting tired, and couldn’t keep up. Night hung like a
weight on your shoulders. But, I reminded you, we still had miles to go.
We had marched on forward, forgetting the way back was of equal distance.
Of the two of us, you were the more weary; this was your fault.

You insisted on running the first few miles to make up for all the times
you skipped going to gym this month. Death is around the corner, you said.
You’d like to avoid his approach for as long as you can. I tried to tell you
this wasn’t an exercise hike. It was a hike for beautiful trees of absurd hugeness,

trees that have been around since before the colonists took this land from the
Native Americans, before the Magna Carta was reluctantly signed, before Brutus
betrayed Caesar. These are trees that have seen it all, observed it calmly from their
rooted positions, the evidence of their longevity concretely present in the spirals

of their wooden bodies.