1.
it has a depth that keeps going—
no matter how deep you go, it goes deeper
meanwhile
(bell birds jostle with clippings of German
and Mandarin)
the walking tracks imply routes to discovery
but really they are threads from one site to another
they reveal nothing of its size
or of where you are in its vast body
it could be in the middle of a geological convulsion, frozen only by sight
it yawns into time
it trickles and cascades
(how many times have you seen it start this way?)
how to come to terms with it?
how to really see it? to not slide across its surface
nor live, unknowing, on its edge
a vast, stormy ocean: petrified
turned into tree form
(if there were a single word)
waves and waves of forest and outcrop
back to the trails and their black, trampled earth
any one of them can escape into the forest dark
or you stand at lookouts and try to think across the sprawling green rugs of it
the scattered needles of white trunks
there is no phrase that you haven’t seen—it surrounds you
with this very sameness
even as it carries your vision to the edge of space
if there were a single word it would be cradle
the way it has always been there, thinking within you
the way that it holds you as your thoughts start to fly
(don’t try to hold on
let it go)
the way there is nothing so small or finite as your body
but nothing so open to blueness, to the pull of the moon
2.
as summer cracks open
(a satchel hung on a post)
nothing to sense but the undulating floor
of an ancient premise
a warm wind gathers you up
the day tips; you start to roll down to the precipice
from where the world drops away
(from the shadows, a milk-blue haze)
what curls around you defines the edges
distant voices welcome your stalled desire
thoughts are sucked out into long strokes of sun
a floor of forest crumples up
and detaches itself from the universe
far below, the white speck of a bird follows the river’s vein
(no, you have not lost yourself, your body’s slight tremors at the cliff)
vast, sandstone theatre, walls
like broken chunks of honeycomb in mid-afternoon light
a flawless blue dome of the imagination rimmed
by endless iterations of forested ridge, paler and paler
until the hue grows darker, like an ocean, just beneath the sky
then, mirrored by these proliferations of verdant arcs,
impossibly blue thoughts stretch to bone white above the horizon—
(name the summits on the other side
or let them float like cool flames)
some things are closer to hand:
the sharp relief of ferns and crags; your feet
pinned to their field
while the rest withdraws from physics into dream-form
its shy smoothness
a sulphur-crested explosion scrawls across your view
(it’s further back
it will not be hurried
it will not wait for you)
this is the ground upon which knowledge grows
a giant snake sinks into the valley floor, dragging sheets of forest
down with its calculus
on and on sight goes, gliding along the contours
or plummeting to what the water has found
before spiralling upward and opening into canyon—
there’s nothing more beautiful than your body
only with your body could you feel this, could you step forward