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 yolked 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.
Crystaline 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.
