Hardscrabble

Most scenery is lost on me. Names mean everything.

You could say these mountains blink back words like dust motes. Words won't bring one down, maybe water, given time. Given time, the right word might. The right word in the right hand, curled like a plan in a foreman's clenched fist, the way we have of mining these days, not veining out at depths and at risk but shrewdly chopping the mountains down.

Don't be so certain the noun is dead. These days. Don't be so sure the imperishable world is, and the letters only stand-ins. Whatever's called may be called up, called out, called back. In time.

These mountains are still appellations.