Sometimes we
put aside the big questions
if we can have a few hours in thinned air
full of snow’s breathing,
full of trees breathing beneath
snow, the weight of winter
so entrenched, we can
feel the whole earth
stilled. And the mountain
seems to accept what we’ve
slashed into it, chainsaws
whining through summer air
so in winter we can claim a freedom
our bodies were not designed for.
We racket down its sides,
our inefficient uprightness
carried back up on cables drilled
into rock. Beneath the fiberglass
and metals, the custom-fitted plastics,
the graphics and pomp we clamp
to our fragile feet, the mountain
keeps a poise that resists
without rejecting us.
But if we’re willing to receive it
softly, through the fragile essence
of our feet, and open ourselves
to its dips and gullies, its glades,
its silence—if we are willing to absorb
the force of a solitude
that makes us disappear, the mountain
opens in us a third eye to find
the places that will let us fly
safely and land without breaking
our new contract with gravity—
we, whose young remain helpless
longer than young ermine or deer—
we whom gravity weights and slows
even in our prime—small wonder
we’re not extinct. The mountain,
though it remembers, allows us
to be gods for a time without doing harm.
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