A Kind of Mountain

Before we begin this post, forgive the jumping around and rather cryptic nature of this particular piece.  Some of it I do not recall the meaning of, and other parts I cannot forget.  I did a little editing for flow and repetition, but the majority is left intact, in regards to how it was penned maybe a year and a half ago.  

To me, this describes well the feelings that I get, both while hiking or backpacking in the mountains, and when thinking about it afterwards.  

Thanks for reading, and we begin:

…And in dreams I hold on tightly to a band of ribbon that I had only barely caught onto, and it draws with a stinging bite against my hand as my body sands.               Drags yet floats.

       ________________________

The mountain ground is mixed with the crushed gravel of boulders
and the dirt and the grass that grows, 
and in higher altitudes the moulds and lichens 
where the west wind blows.  

How the pines stand and creak and whisper 
against the crazy clouds that tear at the fettered wind 
and race up the face of the sharpening ridgeline.  
The tumbled rocks and breaking shale slide against the roots
the mud soaks the trickle from the rock, the pool glimmers 
with a kind of sky locked up upon it.  
The walking path is stamped into the dirt and it has grass covered walls 
that I lean against after coming so high that the sky seems close, 
so close it can steal the air from my chest 
and I faint to the tune of the smell of the pines.  
To the black of the dirt.  
To the salt of my sweat.
  
And when I light a match and the stove flares to light 
whispering like a torch on fire 
I recall all the times.  

All of the times when I was high in the hills
when there were only the rocks under me
when the bones of living things sat still and bleached on the forest ground
when the only way forward was across fields of boulders 
without a living thing growing,
when the entire forest had burnt down and we walked in only tortured trunks 
and barely green undergrowth 
and still silence for hours.  

As I stir with my spoon I recall.  
Kneeling at the mountaintop, 
the cairn as tall as me stacked at the highest place, 
and how I prayed as I placed a stone.  

I prayed as I looked 
and through the trees I could see sky in nearly every direction, 
even as I looked downward there was the blue.  

And there was me, and there were You. 
With me as I sat alone 
on the constant soaking mountain.

Synesthesia

I sat smoking my pipe in the armchair that my grandfather had sat in, smoking his pipe himself, all those many years ago.  The hearth was crackling and sending popping coals against the metal curtain that hung across its glowing aperture.

The conversation from the ride home had kept me thinking all evening.  The man that had sat down next to me, the stranger in the trailing coat, the brown eyed man with the subtle implants surgically buried beneath the skin of his temples, had never heard of it before. 

There was a strange tone in his voice as he tried to convince me how much of a liar I was, how nothing of the kind could be, not without sedation at least.

And I had been thinking all evening.  The smoke curled in strange fingers from the warm briar bowl that sat in my hand, and as I smelled the old tobacco blend of Cavendish and vanilla oil, my vision danced alive and then fell still again with the pulse of my breath.  

This particular blend of spice and smoke had always, even as a small child smelling that aroma on the collar of my grandfather, made me see streaks of green, ambient and transparent, a whispered breath of a thing, that ran across my field of vision like aurorae.  The emerald belts would slowly drop in cascading spires and then whisp to nothing.

A man can grow accustomed to so many fantastic things.  It's strange what it takes sometimes to remember the beauty in the world.  

The conversation with the brown eyed and technologically savvy man, it got me thinking once again.

And so I lit my pipe, turned down the ancient oil lamps that guests would complain were so antiquated, and lit a real fire in the fire place, one of the few left in the city, and sat in the dim, smoking.  

And seeing.  

And remembering.

Sparkled in the Streetlight

As my forehead lags in my hand

And my mouth parts with a breath

My eyes close

To the sound of the piano.

And my pen falls to the floor.

The way it was presented to me

At least the way it seemed that day

The stuff of dreams

Was on the air like pipe smoke

In the carpet like coffee stains.

She suggested we get away

So we walked out into the rain

There are things I can’t shake

I told her

Kicking down leaf piles

In the gutter.

The rain fell like mist

Coating her face till it sparkled in the streetlight.

Things I just can’t shake.

I can’t help laughing when the clouds are fantastic

Like mountains

In a fever dream.

In the house

In my head

In the dark

I war with the 29 year old that lives and the five year old

That has refused to die.

Because I keep feeding him fantastic things

And he has grown strong

Yet stayed young.

What does it mean to be a man

With a child caught up inside?

I suppose it means that I have a great task

Of nurturing

To do.

But in the covers alone

Listening to the pummel of rain

And of piano keys

I wonder:

“Could I be made to nurture more than only me?

I remember our walk in the rain

And our talk for half an hour

And handing her a towel to dry her shining face

And I wonder.

About relativity

And singularities

And gravity wells

And event horizons

And the proportions of an hour imposed upon an eternity

How it can make that hour swell

And press at the nearly bursting seams

Of time

And of the lonely space between our houses.”