Humphry’s Island
Ethan Pond, Mt Willey
“if you don’t believe in reincarnation, take a walk in the fucking woods.”
when breath vanishes from my lungs
kneels before my heart and the green
fountain rises before me and reincarnates
and reincarnates
the long isles lead to only one place
solitude
and it moves across my eyes as floaters
the darting personage the gauzy silhouette
of what is yet
just seeing the mountains draped
across the horizon, things once alive in me
offer their wrists, pollinate
new landscapes and eyes sit up,
eyes that have been snoring
and never in transit
never looking for anything or anyone
gawk at everything and every fallen tree
becomes home or humus
huge downed sails draped the
mountainside, splintered masts choked
by new growth, littered
the steep of Willey with a drowsy entropy
the static in the sky had never been so
obvious to me before, metamorphosing
between the shade and glare
of early may
as if branches of the sky showed their dominion
over branches of birch and their limbs stabbed
into earth only to regenerate into the next
growth, the next generation to penetrate
tomorrows low flying clouds and
make dew of them
Strung Between One Season And The Next
we wait on the embankment
in front of tombstones of trees
waiting for the siege of winter
watching the shadows of lanky birches
scar the burnt mountainsides
and the creek cough it’s weak trickle
the footsteps of wind emerging from every corner
Januarys use to be more fertile
use to drop its dress over the
rusted ironwork of branches
by now
Mt Tecumseh would lower it’s staircase to our
two conspiratorial hammocks
strung between two seasons
two falling birds and two twin leashed suns
when finally the library above pushed its books from its shelves
released its white roosters
we pressed on ahead
cut the virgin day in two
composed the most marvelous living music
of ski against snow
crunch against slide
and finally when flanked by night and temperature
a fire rose from the snow
warming a pouch of wine
and toes gnawed on by cold
we retreated to the swing of a hammock
dangling from one season to the next
the chandelier of snow above us mounting