This was an assignment for the Emergence Magazine Nature Writing class. We edited work using feedback from the previous session, so this is an edited version of the poem from the May 31st post.
Jumbo Mountain Speaks
come rest your weariness
on these hard rocks
a stiff wind will buffet your body
proving the heart entombed
in your aching chest
still beats
face west
toward the long white wall of peaks
back to the cities
the fires the shards
those fights are for another hour
feel your hardness
drain into the rocks beneath your palms
your porous bones no match
for their fixed crystals
you were not meant for this
your soft bleeding body
weeps water, not ice
just sit and be
while the wind works its way into you
until your rage flickers out
and there’s new space
between your ribs
I know what it’s like
to feel your heart mined out
set upon by pickaxes
swarmed by the rapacious
proving up on false claims
of their right to strip the world
of whatever life they like
and I know
how to lie still night after night
staring unblinking into quiet stillness
until my shoulders ease;
how to outlast dismantling
it takes an achingly long time
for the ore to lose its currency
the forest to gain a voice
and the scars to grow over
but just listen now
to the exultant tough little aspens
reclaiming this mountain
their young leaves fizzing with joy
roots binding the wounded slope
proving
sometimes healing happens
even in this brutal world
