Prepositions on the Mountain

When I was young I believed in verbs:A spotted fawn butted against his mother,

melt water trickled across the meadow,my hiking shoes pressed into damp soil—

but now I know it’s those prepositions:into across against that carry us through

in much the same way I come trailing afterthe girl in braids and blue-smocked dress

who stood at the blackboard in Mr. Davis’sEnglish class clutching the magic chalk

in her grimy hand, arranging the worldas she diagrammed sentences, hanging one

clause off another on the steep slopeof language.