Solid air
Colliding with my waking moments
Fleeting and palpable
And shifting listlessly through
Mountain streams and alpine trees
And rocky breezes and sunlit dreams.
My held breath seems to remember
What was once an immensity,
So unfathomable to each peculiar life form
– Gliding restlessly upon the surface of dreamscaped imagination –
Yet so identifiably palpable
With my very eyes closed
Facing towards the source of my waking moments
To believe in a word left unspoken.
Tag: mountain
Alone with a Neighbour (day 2151)
Alone I sat
Atop the ol’ cliff
Atop me wise mountain
Gathering reverie.
A hand touched my shoulder –
Sweet emotion I did feel –
A Saint in a brown robe.
With my emptiness
Leading me over deserts
Clouds and the sea,
I was a whisper
Lost in memory
And wind was my friend.
She, we was three,
We sat in our moments
Flying alone
Though neighbours we became.
Over The Mountain (day 2138)
With my soul that’s been flying
I’ve gone over the mountains
Swept little known secrets
Into every day dealings
And with two birds singing
I’ve heard excellent ringing
My mind isn’t reeling
And I’ve come to believe in
What an effort can do then
Like a hand out of water
And heights I’ve been feeling
With my soul that’s been flying.
No More Trees, Money’s For Me (day 2064)
It’s ok that we cut down these trees for warmth
Let’s not get upset about our mountain
Turned crater, shipped to the moon,
Our water is a good memory, a clean memory
A clean memory for my dry lips
Afraid of this purple water
Maybe my dinosaur bones will take me home
To a land full of ten year old trees
Where water flushes the land clean
No more dirty top soil: eroded,
Home where the magical golden clouds
Hover just above the skyline, stinking
And water is just slightly brown
Mycelia? No, my bill fold needs more dinosaur bones
To sink into these fresh water lakes
Chopsticks, chopsticks, chopsticks trees
Get these poles off to the mill
Down that road of rubber and oil
More dinosaur bones and I’m ready to kill
Floating at 70 miles an hour
In plastic rocket ships, towing plastic bricks
And you there, strange looking person
How many toes do you have? You’re not one of us
Your skin is funny and your smell’s different
Let me see your papers that say many things
I don’t believe you can grow your beans here
See, my dead trees and stretched metal rings
Say: ‘NO TRESPASSING’
Get out, leave us alone
You’re filling us with lies
Unless you’ve got tits, beers, football, and guns
Money’s for me, and less of you.
Eroding (day 2050)
Loveless and love loss
The nature of a sulk’n heart
Band around my middle name
Forever leaving marks
River runs through every rock
Stepping off the dock
Eroding goes away my time
Raven watches mine
Truth displayed upon deep bark
Mountain high, valley low
Scratching at my back
Needles upon our heavy ground
Moon at Midnight – Part XXIX (day 2003)
Frank showed up on the first day
He came riding alone
And the scouts had recognized him
Knowing he was coming to us
They knew he was our friend
He spoke to Willow, Moon Cow and I
He said that he didn’t like
What news he had heard of the U.S. Army
Their movement was just too weird
And it seemed like they were gearing up
For a big militia action
He wanted me to know
That he, Amy and Lily
Would happily let us stay with them
Until everything blew over
I told him our plans
Of what Mountain Chief had told us
And that he would certainly see us in the coming months
He understood we couldn’t leave our family
At this time anyways
Without first supporting the migration effort
We had lots of organizing yet to do
So he gave us a token of his friendship
To help us on our way
A knife of fine Swiss steel
His father-in-law had recently given him.
The evening of the second day
We took our teepees down and began walking
Silently into the darkness
The horses carried a lot of the loads
With thongs strapping poles and
Leather skins across their backs
We moved quickly
As our family was very used to walking
Not like settlers
Walking in their fancy Victorian rags
And raggedy old wagons.
We walked for three days to the West
Into the heart of mountain country
It was colder in the foothills
Then out where we came from in the plains
But I loved the trees
Lots of jack pine
With big ol’ needles on them
Covering the ground that we walked on
Very nice and easy on the horse hooves.
We stopped in a valley
North of where Mountain Chief said
The U.S. Army would patrol
He knew the valley as a good hunting ground
That his fathers’ fathers hunted it
And it was far enough off of any regular trail
That it would be very hard for anybody
To find us
And over the next few weeks we
Began making ourselves acquainted with the land.
Moon at Midnight – Part IV (day 1978)
(part III)
As I sat crosslegged in the little clearing
Hidden as I was, deep within the forest
Heading East to the land of the Old People
I wondered about the faces I might see,
Faces of the men and women who would greet me,
Faces of the children playing in fields
And fields growing with the vigor
Only well cared for fields of tender hands can grow
I knew I would find
In the land of the Old People.
Beside me was a little patch of buttercups
That skirted the edge of deeper forest
Fallen logs and fir needles of this land
I could still hear the brook I had crossed
Calmly gurgling in the distance
My canteen still cold from its fill
My belly still churning from its fill
My fingers still wet and a cold
Only fresh mountain water can give,
A cleaning happily taken
Where I had let my bare feet soak gently a while.
My eyes scanned into the forest
Of an age I guessed ageless
Not a stump to be seen
Finding geometry in naturally fallen trees
Trees standing so tall my guess couldn’t reach
Moss covering so gently
I envisioned the industry nestled
Deep within the safety net of moss
That lay about thickly covered forest floor
Fungus’ mycelia layer hidden well
In healthy circles around the Ancient Giants
Old Man’s Beard hanging low
And spider webs zig-zagging
With its delicate fibers of care.
My pouch was always on me
No matter how far from camp I wandered
So as I moved away from my opening
I felt instinctively for my tools
Stepping over former soldiers
Rotting as life continued its circle
Through the efforts of decay
My soft crunch avoided the mounds
Finding edible mushrooms was easy
This early season of harvest
Upon edges of clearings I’d find strawberries
And blueberries and salmonberry brambles
So thick I’d get high
Feeding so heartily on such sugar
I knew it wouldn’t stay forever.
Fire starting was an economy no man could do without
No sane man that is,
For plenty of nights I’d been cold
In pure darkness of deep night,
But this night I had supple moss
And accessible wood dry enough to start
A warming dance in my blood
Soon the coals were hotter then the wood
That burned inside their whispers
My bed was simply a roll
The hard ground was something I was used to
I carried soft fur of a bear
On the top of my bag
Which I’d lay under my roll
To soften each night’s cold
My dream of a sheepskin
I had read about in books
Of old foreign herdsmen roaming
Highlands of Scotland
But I with my simple roll
Laid out on the ground.
Dripping (day 1952)
In one breath I could fly
Let anchors drag deep
And mount mountains wildly,
Calling to twinkling stars
In my deepest yearning
To leave all mystery to me
To leave my unnerving heartbeats
Explosions in the sky
As a brocade of waterfalls
Dripping happily from my toes.
Climb that Mountain (day 1944)
Ahoy, good friends! Tis’ I come home
From a land I loved, I must say
Far off, quite far, several days
Generous fellows called it Rome
With marvelous peaks and glorious domes!
But with every step, the whole way
So many places I just could not stay
Something missing I was never shown.
Then one day who did I see?!
A friend I’d lost, nearly forgot
Lost in thought in a bubbling fountain
For me was worth bounds of glee
For all at once came a quite clear thought
Go home, remember, and climb that mountain.
Summer’s Butterfly (day 1832)
If for a moment your breath should be
Delicate, as summer’s butterfly floats
Then my mind should wander free
Upon full mountains of your slopes.
For blossom precludes summer’s growth,
Where upon our butterfly soaks
In unrelenting glow of Helios,
There, ’tis there I am to live
To cast my heavens stroke in soil
Upon our warmed hearth of serenity.