`In country that is rough, but not difficult, one sees where one is and where one is going at the same time'
As rock speaks to any
trained or curious eye:
someone else
sometime else
laid down words—
thin sheets or thick—
something broke them
lifted, pressed them
here: each rippled sand
each pebble clenched:
motion rendered
visible, in red boulders
thick with clasts, a wild
conglomerate, something made
of other things where
‘pain and suffering shape
the mind,’ a quite implausible
‘up above’ where wind hammers
worlds together: convenient
and bleak
reduced to brash or
lichen crust as brute matter
wind/light/space
a mystery thick
as contour lines on an old map
—called reticent
or maybe clitched, or
‘looking back down
the path to the sea’
—I meant seabed
a fossil storm just
part way up
to paradise—look here:
a shallow dip in rough scree
‘where water comes gradually
into focus’ only because
it trembles: that is wind
speaking softly
heard by those who carry pain
as others carry
talismans, a descendental
willingness
to walk all day in pursuit
of fear—I mean
to corner it, trap it, parse it
thumbing a rock
of green/black waves
touching light
in the form of leaf
time in a metamorphic
stone: ‘and who
with any sense
can’t be interested
in that?’—the sheen
the shades, the Gates
of Delirium—
sandstone, sandwort
iron oxide
thought or spasm
touch or word:
where a breeze
crosses pain flutters
muscle, ligament
sediment, sentiment
trees bent flat
by wind and snow
skirling waves
of rock uplifting:
try to stand there
try to find
a there exactly
touching here
a timberline
so crystal clear
so free of pity
free of dread
and all the lakes
that live there still
as wind
From The Avalanche Path in Summer, first published Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry & Ecopoetics.
