Alpine Lovers

Alpine Lovers
 
   My wife touched me with her soft shower of love so gentle that I found my way out of my labyrinth of solitude and into a blossoming more springlike than imaginable for my hermitage of the heart. Like monks in a Buddhist monastery, we follow the snowmelt in golden silence. Like moonwalkers, we use sunglasses in the white glare. But unlike their boot prints which last billions of years ours in the snow last a lazy summer’s afternoon.  
     The sun sinks crimson over the icy peaks. We wander through alpine meadows with knapsacks over our shoulders. The wind breathes. The rush of wind cools my face as we follow a trickle of water up to the mountainside toward more snowfields that wait.
     Now the sun is behind the peak and leaves streaks of purple and red painted across the darkening sky. Venus appears and shimmers in the pale light. Slowly Orion materializes and runs across the sky on some ancient hunt. Shadows cover the highland. The thin cool air makes me giddy. I feel my feet sink into the soft snow.
     The land is barren now and we unpack our lean-to and set it up. We lay together with the wind whistling through our ears where we take shelter as two chili peppers in a veggie enchilada of sleeping bags.
     Across the valley, the lights of the village glow like tiny distant suns. I hear a rustle through the snow, lie quietly, and breathe deeply. Two yellow eyes aglow stare at me. I look back into the wolf’s eyes and find recognition. My sister the wolf sits still. I take some sardines and hold them out as an offering. The wolf devours them and licks my fingers hungrily.
     Suddenly she leaps into the dark void and disappears leaving me alone in my desolation. As the night wears on, wolves howl in the distance. My serene thoughts turn to dreams of wifely tresses silvered by snowflakes from a wedding comet whose gown caresses the earth with my belle’s song of the wood nymph blowing in the breeze while trees are singing in the wind.