Tag Archives: mountains

Conquering Mt Katahdin

Teeth grind against time, older than heart beats;
bury themselves in the nape of the world
and through that grit they grunt back, “I dare you,”
so in droves we come to mine from them ‘truth.’

But ‘truth’ does not move through time as we do.
Desperate for relevance in our space,
we seek stability in the journey;
while what is true finds no movement worthy.

Thus those mandibles remain static
while we struggle for purchase against them;
should we win, overcoming their long face
we will have, in the end, lost the race.

The drums of victory may course in our veins
as we stand atop the corpse of impulse
to reflect on the unconquerable
hoping someday to be ponderable,

yet our triumph is too brief a passing
to reconcile against the scales of time,
like a flash of lightning through the night sky;
radiance wasted in a blink of an eye.

Photograph by David Wilson

Throwing Rocks

Let the stone stand
the mountains seed

               planted

marked by arrogance
to commemorate some meaningless deed.

Let the stone stand,
the visionary’s pride

               sculpted

shaped by waking dreams,
that only the brutal rocks can confide.

Let the stone stand
the idealogue’s last breath

               buried

by thousands of its lesser
matching presence with cuts unto its death.

Let the stone stand
the titan’s bane

               humbled

laid low by the cutting slivers of time
leaving nothing more than a phantom pain.

Let the stone stand
as a reminder

               warning

pride is a chisel to make sand from mountains.

The Mountains are Silver with Winter’s Leavings

  Black pines                         the moon weeps
to see them drag that thing screaming
                           a bundle of noise
             given agency in sound
                           such luxuries are deceiving

                           Red lights│
                                        blue│
                           silver strobes of tinsel

                          The colors slip over the tilled snow
             like a long gown dragged over the stairs
they whisper beneath the fugue of fear
             those concerned cries calling out for a close ear
                           for someone who cares.

But the sound is too loud
             it bludgeons empathy

Pity the trees that must stay
             to witness such horrors
                           ever protesting in the wind
                                        but unable to look away.

Appalachia (photo by Valerius Tygart)

Look off into the stoic mountains
the stubborn, biting and cold mountains

There they’ve stood for centuries unmoved
as if born already old mountains

Cutting through the landscape like trauma
the earth exposed by these bold mountains

history stretched past the horizon
tales of violence that molds mountains

that humbled all life to fire and ash.
Let the next species behold mountains

ours spent their lives trying to break them
but only aeons can fold mountains.