"Mountain"

     In the parking lot in the rain, two crows
     extricating pink strips of meat

     from the trash. I do not understand
     the ways of this world, the exquisite sense.

     And the rain, it raineth every day
     on the mountain and the ornamental

     cherries on my street, which has its own
     wet crows, and sometimes a raven. Blossom-

     squall: the first fluorescence of spring gives way
     to the rose mourning of petal-fall. A drop

     in temperature and hail drums my hardshell
     hood as I climb the worn stone

     of the Blenkinsop trail. There, I said
     the name—and he took the land too. With

     a damaged ankle I stagger
     in pentameter, my foot inverted. I am

     a limpet holding fast to rock
     as waves submerge its patelliform husk

     inch by inch. In limping metre I walk
     the mountain to learn the language

     of mountains. (My knees hurt just thinking
     about it.) Then the rain, the hail, they

     stoppeth. Thufferin thuccotash
     the downy woodpecker sings to the Quercus

     on whose branch it lights—and lifts in a puff
     of sawdust as the oak croons April’s

     softening air. These woods, a theatre
     of spring, costumed actors performing

     the perennial melodrama. I walk
     to earn the brisk parlance of wind-

     blown pine buntings and Calidris
     melanotos, the pectoral sandpiper

     who never misses a day at the gym. (Summer
     will be here soon.) The mountain

     is not a mountain, technically. Technically
     it doesn’t measure up, though the route

     leads where it will—to a late-winter cougar
     scampering across a snowy trail

     I remember, to a New Year’s lynx
     and to the Comox Glacier as it winks

     out. Such a graceful name, the Keeling
     Curve, as if Hogarth had thought it. Set keel

     to breakers, said Pound at the beginning
     of things. Yo canto to keep myself

     company, keep moving forward, off-
     balance, still climbing. The top comes dropping

     slow. I spy snowdrops in the shape
     of flamingos: S-curved, violin-

     scrolled, octopus-armed. O downcast
     flower, what ails? The cold spell’s fingers

     around your whimbrel’s neck? Or did you dive
     too deep into your phone? Namesake

     of winter, vessel of cold, I leave you
     as quietly as spiders passing through

     my house by night and unwalk the path
     around the mountain to unmake it –

     and unmake it mine that one day I might
     be unearthed. Hungover from too much

     fresh air, worn out by outdoors, I continue
     this trespass and take a second lap

     of the mountain, stopping to peep
     into the understory, to tread

     the riddle of a wobbly rock, to crouch
     down for a better look at a high-

     calibre slug. I walk over and over
     the mountain backwards and under

     the ground, chewing on Lew Welch, who wandered
     into the mountains for good in 19-

     71 at the age I am now—
     and on that May when caterpillars

     were all that anybody could talk about.
     Western tent caterpillar experts

     on the radio, gardeners reporting
     their scores. On my car, a crawling layer

     of fur, and underfoot, goo. The world
     is too strange and it is with us. I write

     a mountain journal, take a mountain
     nap, count mountain hours, keep mountain time

     like a sentry gopher tasting poplars
     in the ether. In the mountain town, the line

     is out the door of the bakery, roast
     on the breeze that ruffles the hair of tourists

     like me who gaze at strata, reading
     between the lines. Technically, the gophers

     are ground squirrels. In the high valleys
     where there is never no wind, mornings

     are alive with the sound of magpies
     and the waving of lodgepole pines

     in the singed air. Where there’s smoke, there
     I am, breathing it in. Wildfire spreads

     like wildflowers and wildfire. I ledger
     seasons on my piebald skin. Tomorrow

     tomorrow, tomorrow is all. Winter
     is followed by fire and fall. It’s raining

     again. It’s boring. Are we not finished
     with spring and its poetry now

     that water is coming through my jacket
     to say No words for the sake of words?

     No art but that lights on what’s there. Mountain
     road and mountain pass. Mountain window

     framing the view. Mountain lodge with no
     whiskeyjacks despite parental promises

     and now we’re an hour out, snackless beyond
     birdseed, and quite fed up. Dawn was cerise

     on slush, the panes of ski cabins
     were Ghiberti doors, and the melt

     drowned out the needles’ electric hum. It’s dusk
     and I must finish my ceaseless loop

     and set the wheel spinning again. Wilting
     light’s blush turns distant glaciers to salmon

     belly and shadow. Below the sky’s
     boundary a metallic strip

     of ocean coruscates at the edge
     of sight. What am I but a halibut

     with laryngitis? But O! to be
     coho. Or to leave the roads that bears take

     through mountains. Vanished, I would see.
     On far melting peaks it is hard winter

     still. My son, I left you a dream
     of an avocet; my daughter, whisper

     of lichen to rock. So long. Take care. I
     am going nowhere slowly and soon

     I will be home.