March 17, 2006

Good Things About Seattle: You Can Take Big Walks

In The Cascades

Above the trail to the summit
Clouds climb the mountains --
Hands through water, fingers of rain,
Smoke in dreams, as steps accumulate,
Placing first one foot, then the other,
Pacing out the rip-rap of the years.

Below the snow ghosts swirl behind
Drifts of leaf-shimmer, billowed veils
Of wind whose whispers echo back
Across the distant silence singing
To the tempo of the breath:
"Once only, once only, only once."

Above the stream in the ravine.
Watched by sentinels of stone, of fir,
Of trees so tall their tops dissolve
Into the breath of the mountains.
Ebony glints of ravens' wings
Banking into green on darker green.

Below it's all been settled long ago.
Only on foot, step by step,
Can you climb up, beyond,
And out of time -- except for the weight
You carry on your back; gossamer
Thread spinning down into the Labyrinth.

At the crest, looking back, looking below,
Herds of mule deer graze beneath the pylons
Where a survey crew measures the steel river,
For a grid of concrete and copper cables
Feeding the Matrix coiled along the coast.
Above, the mountains' shoulders shatter the rain.

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Posted by Vanderleun at March 17, 2006 9:25 PM | TrackBack
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AMERICAN DIGEST HOME
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Gorgeous shot, Gerard--and beautiful poetry to match. Yeah, the rain really sucks around here--but you're beginning to see why people get addicted to this place, as I have become. There's no more beautiful and spectacular geography in the continental U.S., in my opinion, where water and mountains touch, where the horizontal and vertical are in such perfect harmony. Get out and enjoy it as much as you can--it will renew you.

Posted by: Dr Bob at March 17, 2006 11:40 PM

Oh that makes me hideously homesick (or rather, more hideously homesick than I was before I saw it). Where exactly is that picture taken? *sigh* It is so beautiful.

Posted by: Cathy at March 18, 2006 11:00 AM

Oh gee, you too, falling into that smug Seattle/"God's Country" crap.

Posted by: Raw Data at March 18, 2006 6:00 PM

Well, when you think about it, everywhere is God's country, isn't it.

That said, I wouldn't want to have to weed it.

Posted by: Gerard Van der Leun at March 18, 2006 9:23 PM

Tha's exactly my point. The world is a beautiful place and only narrow smug ignorant Puget Sounders would somehow think that we are the only gorgeous place in the world -- or that even the sage-brush "wastes" of our own State are not beautiful. Every time I hear one of our yocals effuse about our beauty I want to ask if they have ever really seen Kansas. But I know that they are too blinded by lack of travel to understand.

Posted by: Raw Data at March 19, 2006 8:45 AM
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