The
Mountain Firetower
Days
and months are travelers of eternity.
Matsuo Basho
on
Nose Mountain, mongrel clouds lift a sad shroud, grey and
brown
valleys
yield to green-up. a few furtive songbirds mate among stoic
evergreens.
a little over bird cries, "teacher, teacher." on Nose
Mountain,
weather instruments stand alone. the white weather
station
stands alone. the clear rain gauge stands alone and i, like
the
steel
firetower, stand alone watching for forest fires while the
mountain
works on me. but the firetower is condemned, unstable,
dangerous
even and i its captive migrant. i scratch my crotch like
men
do in public then enter the cedar cabin to a dawn chorus
of
bombings
in the Middle East, nuclear weapons broiling around the
cracked
globe and women telling their war rape stories. i turn down
the
heat and wander outside searching for something to hold
onto
the
ladder on the firetower, too cold. i see myself as a white-rumped
hawk
hovering above thinking, no hands. lingering snow drifts
disappear.
the alpine magnetic field surges crackling the wind's
larynx.
i wonder how not to discipline a specter. i see and hear
purple
fairy
orchids hidden under spruce. i see and hear in between
everything
i have known. i see myself as a white wolf howing,
"when
will the cities ring of freedom, when?" the mountain shakes,
a
muted
orgasm and says nothing. it's too soon. i have just arrived.
i
haven't
collapsed into the silence or something naked. but an albiino
bear
appears and grasps the rain gauge with its grinning teeth
and
dances
iinto the bush while a flock of pink bohemian waxwings fly
away
with the weather station. "ah, relative freedom," i shout
to the
moon's
peeking skull. but i am afraid. will defiant mountains be
destroyed?
the mountain has much to say, it cannot all be translated.
and
will we too disappear?
In
the illuminated darkness
On a rocky mountain
Wild shadows
Eclipse the moon
Originally
published in Breathing Nose Mountain
by Vivian Demuth, Long Shot Productions, Hoboken, NJ, 2004.