By Elaine Maria Upton
Anthropomorphism has its place. It’s
a starting point, at least. So, I’ll say
if i have eyes, then a mountain has eyes,
and whatever happens after that
is poetry, where i become lost,
and there are no conditions, no
consequences. There’s only the mountain,
Mother, inside, around, leaping, plunging down.
The hips of the mountain where wombs
curl inside wombs, generations of granite, coal,
and sequoyah, woodpeckers and eagles
and sparrows. Cedar and pine plunge
their roots into the Mountain Mother.
They cannot escape her. They are her,
and in their knotted wrestling in the ground,
through ages, they return, return, return……
She rains from inside, and curls to clouds.
The clouds embrace her. She is clouds.
She is the light of birch bark, carved to sail
on her soothing rivers. The nimble, nibbling deer.
She is King, Queen, priest, choirs and silence.
Always she reigns, with absolute rule,
and her rule is bounty and blessing.
She is the daughter of Sun, the son
of Moon, and waxes, heaves, cries, folds,
sings. She sings and there is silence. I AM
the Mountain. I go into these hills
as into mySelf. Ground hogs, moles,
mushroom, moss, hawk, and helix-
spiral of flower and cone, cicadas
are my messengers. Leaves fallen
from trees are my skin. Gray wolves
are my solitude. Brown bears, my wisdom,
Buffalo rising from my bowls, rushing
through Air of plains, urging the sleeping
Earth, are my Fire. Unearthed, Everest,
Blanc, Kilimanjaro, Shasta, Shambala,
I climb to clouds, copulate in crystal bed
of snow, promiscuous with all the stars,
am the clouds, the Star, am what is beyond,
unseen, unseen, Un/Seen, un/Born
before the blossom and chatter of Spring.
Watery springs gossip sweet news, gurgling
falling from my throat, calling,
calling, calling: come, always, I Am
here; I Am/Mountain all around, above,
below, within. Come, there is nowhere to go….
I AM/singing , the Sound that is always here…
2 March 1999
Hyde Park, everywhere
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