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.