Mountain Ramble

I come to this place
overlooking the river canyon
where the distant ridges
slope skyward to snowy peaks,
where clouds lined-up moving east
spread flat on the bottom gray,
white cotton billowing on the top,
and like wind a faint sound of water
can be heard when no one speaks.

This place I come to
has a history of dead trees,
burnt snags, overturned rocks
and a certain amount of mystery,
naked woodcutter, headless woman,
hidden teepee, and an herb farm.
Any deer path or open space
might lead to adventure.
Birds are everywhere in the evening.

I come to this place
for peace, a silence only wilderness
can provide. Pine branches,
Manzanita, deer prints in mud,
a mix of Coyote brush, last fall’s
dry fallen oak leaves, and damp
dark places under logs rotting.
Flickers darting in the treetops.
Skyline undulating like an open sea.

This place I come to
in starry night, cold, snowy white
or hot in summer, still, in August
quiet in altitude, Haystack Peak
Sequoia Gigantia, or Beaver Creek.
Here I seek words like granite
under ice or morning grasses
in sunlight. Where everything
is compassion for the masses.

circle of dark trees
on the mountain canyon slope
shadow of a cloud

fragments

the wind and the dust
the rain and the mud
the snow and the cold
the flower and the bud

Sunset Ode

An easy undulating line of ridge
which distance amplifies how far away
it stretches out to thought as would a bridge

across a river or an inlet or a bay
westward seeking easily, this sunset
reminding me what light is lost each day.

Such moments briefly beautiful and yet
a world brightly battered, dark as blood
and shining like a badge, I can’t forget.

Whose honors now come to mind, a flood
of images, fiery as old faces,
as memories in March when flowers bud.

Come what come beauty in such vast spaces
fades like Winter dusk and leaves no traces.