Trailheads

Why do people come up here
To talk? It’s clear they feel good
About themselves being here—

Something to do with wellness,
Self-care, being in nature.
Then they talk and talk and talk,

Quietly, mostly, adults.
Only the children and teens
Run around shrieking wildly,

And someone else brought them here,
For their own good, most cases.
Of course they shriek. Who wouldn’t

When tethered to their own good?
But conversation. Really?
Maybe if it were earnest.

Lovers might have need of this
Privacy and open air.
Physicists might stroll the trails

Like philosophers, gabbing
About thought experiments.
But what snippets do we hear?

Chit-chat about laundromats,
Jumper cables, what’s for lunch,
Photographs, fish, this and that.

Often the conversations
Continue all the way up
And all the way down the paths.

Tut-tut, we mutter. Tut-tut,
To ourselves, proud of ourselves,
Ghosts talking only to ghosts.