the mountaineer

I.
having come down from the scraped sky once 
again the ten-thousandth trip or more, probably 
more, my ligature hardened to it, not many 
like me, hamstrings so cabled even years 
of chiropractics can't loosen. unlost by attunement
as a bell or spiderweb to a breeze
in-the-know of the knoll-curved and 
cutbank-curved, stone-hipped or breast-wooded
or thorned nose sigils, whether bent or re-bent;
whether unspoken or spoken satanically
echoed, echoed back, here hill-shoulder, there
finger-point of ledge and the tattle scents 
not unlike from the hollow beneath the arm of a 
lover, these things and more so that it will 
take a thing as terrible as Death to confound me 
before I ever become lost. having made such journeys 
over forty years repeated I am devolved nearly 
to half-bear and still the bears flee me seeing I am 
half-man, stranger to all worlds, lonely, and not 
unlike Cain. I stopped wearing shoes fifteen years ago. 
I could turn sideways and vanish like a folded shadow 
and you would not believe I ever was. and now, again 
I return though am less sure to what, similar perhaps 
how Lucifer returned to Heaven again, over, over 
to speak of the wonders of the dark to a God who never 
believed him.

II.
witnessed: sometimes trees fall not by wind or sag of age 
but of the cause of silence, too heavy. in those moments 
a single breath will fill the entire forest and all the 
trees inhale to catch it on their tongues green 
and legion. in the spring the springtails, tiniest of legged 
beings migrate in billions, for what no one knows
to where no one knows, an urge miniature but dense 
as an atom. press a hand to the ground and they will 
sooten it to a living glove. I have seen mossy beds fit for 
lovemaking and branches sprung ready for the hanging 
of saints. in winter storm the sky striving to mimic the 
earth so painted perfect that only the hollow sound 
of bones shattering would announce that you’d
trod on air away from ground. I know to stand when 
the clouds prepare to part and to bow before they 
slam like bookends around my head. 
in the end all this wisdom will make sense 
and then I will die of it.

III.
the land has character, waits dormant for action
to be spoken of, to be told stories of or lied of lovingly.

IV.
and yet I’ve returned. would it matter if I told you I was 
raised crazy in a land where everyone bashed their 
skulls together. where elephants run cripple for the 
want of wastebaskets. where all the bees have convulsed 
and died for the Aryan cruciform of pure lawns. 
I’ve long since stopped being ashamed of my ignorance 
of pop culture, of the patches on my shirts, or the way 
that I replace words I’ve forgotten with grunts and whistles. 
the wind knows how to fill all the mind's holes and I am an 
apt pupil. only the obsessed run to the mountains and 
do what they’re told, following the whims of dead 
pipe-smoking white men from Boston. they’ve taken 
their crazy with them in redundancy, in ambition, in 
derivative circles. mine—let the 
coyotes have it, pluck it out like the offending eye 
spoken of in Matthew, let it be strewn for linear miles 
like the guts of a slain fawn.

V.
and yet I’ve returned. say it is for a kiss, or else the common 
taste of something unholy. perhaps I’ve come back to speak 
with you, something of owls, of the lateness of crickets
of the shortness of time. 
​