tryingpoetry

Mountains, Two Parts

One night the lake was black as space Reflecting stars And the big mountain slope was half in shadow But the other half the color of the full moon Her trees wreathed with snow like scales on a fish and her mood alive and terrible

She was alive in that place Communing with the stars Her slopes shone like metal And her mood like a red hot sun at noon Talking the long language of planets, a niche and I knew she remembered a crucible

I pass her slopes often and she's not been awake since I wonder in the long peel of geologic time did I see her wake once in a million(s) of years and the lake's young depths, are no longer afraid

Peach Fuzz

Trees are like mold seas like overripe spots filled with dew

It's told she'll sing new auts when we're through

Gravity

The world is falling apart I've my corner to live in and worry to poach in Like an egg

But when doesn't boil in a bath Perspective will fill in like a fish I'm finning Into the current

Streamlined and scaled The water sublime I turn downstream and let the water carry me

Then it's like gravity Existing makes you move Towards the center of mass Let it translate you Let go

Bigleaf Maple

I set out in the fall for the east Bigleaf maples yellow against the green douglas fir The grey skies faded into the green At the top of the pass

And the trees change in the east Ponderosa pines and quaking aspen Still yellow and green But the skies blue at last

Until you climb to the north Into the tallest mountain's silver country Where golden larch grow Against cuts of green argillite

Gloaming

I don't know what that word means but I know how it feels My ears hear it and it tells The neurons something

I don't know if it's rightly known but it doesn't matter anyways My heart is tied now To the all unknown

the overwhelm and the volume and the vastness of the world tiny next to the vastness of the universe and the long long time of light-years and wondering are we all alone or full of company because if it's a numbers game who would ever know

Kindness is all that matters and like her sister she's leaving as a different tribe and a wild thing the mycelium leaving behind roots in the old uncertain tree tracing lines into the heart Even though she hates to know it might die

Until then I am the sword and the fire who has known not battle, secret but stares straight into it's hell imagining the worst so as to save the sweetest most tender wondering at the test knowing full well it might fail on the waters of the San Juan but I'll be damned if I don't try

Lead or old age, spend it well

Goodbye, just for now

I remember the fire the most that hardens the steel strong but brittle

Then quenching The red hot heat magnetism gone

Later slow warming Inside the heart expanding open

brittleness softens to the color of straw arching back

Clear as a day with a gentle rain swaying a tall oak

Dreaming of Hammers

hickory handles and wrought steel anvils hot coals and sparks and the wind of a tuyere

A slug of steel and a blueprint in the minds eye that smells like swisher sweets and half ton gasoline

To red waxy clay and oil paints prisms of color lead wooden bases for bronze

Unbidden

The birds sing and the sky dims False dusk is coming And a regal old fat ass robin sits on the pigpen fence

The buzz files through my brain The malt is strong with this one And the sinking sun makes me think of times long since

The old man and the sea and me The line and tug and scales and bone And the thinking son takes me back to the past long tense

Where the white bass roamed and rock bass hid under shelves of stone

Post Vise

Rust and pitting and you grind it all down Till you see the shiny metal again wipe it with boiled linseed oil To keep it pretty

It sat, like me outside in that “Heavy Marine Air” next to a cold forge

And I rusted and got pitted The days past me by until she sank me in vinegar and ground me down

I'm not stripped bare yet but I see my metal again lots of work to do until I can bend hot steel again

Fire the forge and make what I want to make

The Room

Eve told me about it filled my mind with space like water and overflowing openness

Strange because it's mine and she didn't live there but she knew openness

Creation floods through me with wind in the firs their needles green Faraway maps openness

In that openness... A high vaulted ceiling books all the way up on all sides Ancient library ladders Two leather bound chairs and ottomans desks broad and made of cherry wheeled chairs, plush and easy for arms Stained glass mural double doors to the garden

And no clock