Mid-summer heat, or is it late?

now it is pain to stay in one place
blue cool lakes and the mountain out:

constants, and the constant variable
of going

distinctions of end and beginning lost
in travel, skipped over

as if changing time zones, concepts,
that’s all, nowhere as real as the snowpack

still covering the trail, even now
in almost August, even in this heat wave

a sort of sedition, stamped in place
by the hooves of mountain goats

who could not care less about any
of this, who hover above the tree line

like specks of clouds against
the high cloudless sky.