Above Kibber
poem and photo by Gemma Mathewson

The path curving through
the village is unpaved and
runs out upslope beside a cairn
heaped with yak horns
in nubbly rust colored loops.

No tree line obscures our view
of a cluster of white houses
their windows rimmed in black trapezoids
to absorb sunlight, their flat roofs
overlapped at the edge with dried brush
that wicks off snow to prevent roof collapse.

I don't know how much snow, exactly,
it being mid-July
but I'm told the road is closed
October through May and tongues of
two glaciers lap the switch back approach.

Below a family in a terraced field,
the wife and three children stoop
behind the farmer, who guides
his yoked yaks beside him.

Only now, plowing and sowing.
I begin to connect a distant singing voice
to the farmer by the coincidence of his notes
with the movement of the beasts.
Forward, backward, pause, turn.

The voice is not commanding -
it is a love song. Pure, ringing into the wind,
it reminds me of my favorite sound
in all the world, Ben Franklin's glass armonica.
Crystalline vibration in rare atmosphere.

And listening acutely,
not an echo, but an antiphon
in folds of the valley obscured
more voices elevate in resonance
with spring planting and snow capped peaks.