The Mountains
at first they were impossible to get to,
miles, tests, enigmatic to achieve
for a flatland kid,
people who could only be acting out
as smudgy criminals, apostates
or swarthy child prodigies, sinewy gods
lived there on a stage of immaculate photographs,
polygamous pasturages, dried fruits,
enshrined by snowcaps
their survival & medicinal arts
standing out in geography texts
under a sentence
demonstrating how GDP could be won from barter
travel then, the only way up
to a remote ideology, some say
an unpretentious outcropping, beautiful,
some say toxic tailings,
drone imagery of the positions
of an insurrection 'in tin'
(they couldn't ever cooperate
much less leave them alone
when suddenly everything turned to big rock candy
well below the jet stream
forced south snowing-in the peace, the locals
took the forecast off a bird, also traveling
along a shangri-la massif, of sedentary & generic lore
into which it disappears as a satellite
(nothing, some say)
'youngest brothers under heaven
attract sisters to a roof of sky,'
cheese wheels transport them to & from
winter
dependencies hang in the air:
pine smoke, power lines
a family re-bonds on crucial hikes,
its superficial matters compressing into obsidian
(bloody garb of skins distinguishes sedimentary generations
of illusive prey
while in innocence scree kids (goat proteges)
split off to seek earth's pinnacles
prayer flags refine at wind's command
into half-numb bourgeois adventures,
deep valley repression is confessed to anyone nearby
trekking earthsoul remains
(the nitty-gritty of elevated human love)
'there go walking
athlete aesthete scientist orogeny-beings'
is rhapsodized in spaces between polises
ranges coil around sky,
born from vulcanism, a snake slumbering
on the dark horizon's contour line
witnesses every ascent, adjudicating the heights
of each gonzo paradise immanent with physiology,
capable of biting a fuzzy head swaddled
in high-tech fastness
bee-lining its lungs to the top
(naturally oxygen-reduced touch-&-go of brain cells,
an air-cooled 4-cylinder like introspection
somewhere down there with a broken neck
in the sludge of nations &
the submergence of divers
alone except for poetry, sole equal in hyperbole
among magma lattices & flowery alps
(hiccups) brought up for the occasion, wine
by some grasped to compensate
a tied tongue tied tongue
uncairned faceted panoramas anywhere you turn,
mind's plateaus may be addicted
to absolute snaggletooth stone yonder
cut by experience below,
a hardsell convincing to death the relativity of 'all welcome
to a brief undreamed life'
('package deal downhill weekend' click click
of bindings & cameras
(the poet focuses sober
wandering another intertruth divide afar
on fireflies, peaked brushstroke words
commemorating sipping flask whiskey on the brink
of the avalanche land 'Li Po's Breathing,'
sky pre-twilight azure going pink,
Snowy Owl Lady
forges ahead on a silent nordic track,
glides into the caldera's ideogram
—Dave Shortt
