I found your Himalayan chronology
online: a comprehensive set of cores
from a popular ski area in Kashmir.
I know you were there in 1973
and you felt the improbable stay
of November, before snow slams down
the airplanes; mountain-shine
through long blue needles, shadows
and cores fresh on the snow in stripes.
The measurement, later: Ashok brought tea
sweet and gingery, gaot-milk thick
held far from the calipers. You drank
the first half in 1790 between the earlywood
and latewood. In 1600, you remembered
the rest of it but it had a skin by then.
The oldest core had a pith
from the year Babur came with court painters
to document wild Hindustani animals
and trees, none of which made it both
onto the Persian vellum and the internet.