I’ve lived on Big Mountain
for almost five years. Thirty acres
of forest & tumbling rock. Song-cries

of Whip-poor-will in summer. Snowfall
brings fireplace fires with ax-chopped
wood. I prefer snuggling inside

like a just-hatched warbler. Weather fronts
drift by. Resembling a piece of pale
yellow honeydew; often the moon

swells larger at this elevation. My husband,
my divine opposite, prefers memorizing
the land. He hikes it daily — 300 trees

planted, one natural water spring found,
two Copperheads sighted. (Only God
knows the amount of ticks.) He even plants

hard-to-grow-in-Kentucky trees, like Bristlecone
Pine. The oldest one in the world, Methuselah,
is 4,854. His Bristlecone is named Aristotle

& only grows an inch a year, he’s four
inches tall now. One day I will tell you more
about the stubborn Bristlecone but this

is about our intertwining. I’m the one
who watches the news & sometimes takes
action. He’s the one who fashions walking

sticks from deadfall. I’m the one who stacks
books on side-tables like sculpture. He listens
for the quiet shuffling of bobcat, ear to the wind.