January, Evening Textures, the South Wallowas

Walking the World: Look at the
Mountain!

Having physically touched and lifted countless rocks,
my eyes sense effortlessly the mountain’s rough, cold
texture, its immensity, its great weight.
But this image, while certainly as real as it is beautiful,
is still just an image, strangely ungrounded, distant.
Looking through my glass, I notice how the sight of
two climbers slowly crossing a steep snowfield
instantly provides not only proportion, but also a
feeling for absolute size—a kind of kindred presence,
bringing that which is far away closer to home.

And yet, to actually cross the snowfield oneself—step
by step, breath by breath—is in some profound sense
truly to make the mountain your own. And that’s the
wonder of walking: it threads the world and oneself
together into one, inseparable weave. I say the world
is not just seen, but made—made with the soles of
my feet.

THE LITERAL MAN

Stretched between the most distant of
stars and the
sparks which fly from the
candle’s match
is the silver string of
young intelligence,
a vibrant face among the flowers,
resonant with the music of all

springs.

Still close
to the ground

where perception begins, before
thought’s cells grow thick and woody walls,
and where meanings still
flow and freely merge,
where triangles and squares become
rounded in rhyme, and where the moon
is an apple on the
tree which has its roots in the sky.

Break the string
and the apple falls
into the lap of an unhappy

grown-up, eyes dull with
years of TV,
the life of one channel only
which does not change, which does not change;
where sense stays at home, alone, afraid
to venture out,
and becomes
precisely, neatly, bounded in

time.

Break the string
and the stars
at night will fail to cohere and

start to fall,
no longer turning
around their centers,

no longer,
threaded together,
in song.

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