The Mountain Poem

The Mountain Poem
(march 17, 2023)

Today,
when I started,
I meant to walk
through the new mountains,
where sharp edges
thrust upward.
Always embarrassed at their nakedness,
the peaks have now slung hasty,
below the shoulder,
a soft garment of green
which teases another season to life.

It has been winter
and hibernation
for the longest time,
with everything visible disguised
by a transitory purity
that now blackens and shrinks
under sfumato’s cheerful blue sky,
beyond which,
sun is on fire.

All of this, I observe
and it pauses my forward motion
until yesterday’s hard things soften to a dream,
identify themselves as soft puffs above
that could be from Tecumseh’s,
or any other grandfather’s
pipe. Is this a signal?
Maybe the clouds warn the future,
before it arrives.

I am caught, as anyone or thing is,
in the hour of one moment
by a web impossible to comprehend,
an intricate net of fine strings
with no apparent source,
no purpose,
no end.