Meeting

These hard hills, which built my body and rock it
with such memories, have disclosed to me the miracle
of she who doesn't know I live her while failing to grasp her.

I met her one evening, a bright, clear spot
beneath ambiguous stars and a summer haze.
We were surrounded by the  scent of these hills,
a smell deeper than darkness, and a sudden sound
rose up as if from these hills, a voice
both clean and strident, a voice of lost times.

Sometimes I still see her - she lives in my gaze
distinct and unchanging, like a memory.
I've never been able to hold her: her reality
eludes me each time, removes me to a distance.
I don't know if she's beautiful. For a woman, she's young:
so young I'm surprised, when I think of her,
by an old memory of childhood spent
among these hills. She's like morning, her eyes hinting
at all the remote skies of those old mornings
And she has in those eyes  a firm purpose: the cleanest light
that sunrise ever cast upon these hills.

I've created her from the essence of all things
dearest to me, and I've never been able to grasp her.