you are out on Bear Mountain
like a pilgrim
with an empty quiver --
you’re hunting nothing
but pines and manzanitas
walking on logging roads
whose pitch, crown
and water berms
of gravel and clay
stumble your feet –
you needed to breathe
the trees today
you look up
to hurried clouds
of a storm coming soon
and so you’ll stumble home
you know
there is an uncanny tree --
a tree you named --
on the other side
of this mountain
you’ll pass by the tree --
a redwood that stands
among others of its kind
all straight as telephone poles --
tall redwoods piercing the sky
with limbs as thin as spears
to snap in storms
and stab a man
to briskly make a widow
although you are man
with a husband,
he’d be bereft too
should winds launch
those lovely spears at you
the pilgrim’s way
has just the right risk
*
this tree you’ve named bends
unlike the others --
huge branches bred
to stretch the air
and run parallel to earth --
branches thick as a trunk
the strange arms spread
to run against
the common nature
against the usual world
as though to welcome
both inverted wayfarers
and hungry grey squirrels
a candelabra of spongy bark --
an icon of oddity
sparking with its inordinate form
a fire of queer beauty
you found her years ago --
and only because
you lifted your head
did you see her damaged
crown of craggy snares --
a lightning strike many years ago
fired strange harm at her --
an arrow of flames
lopped off her top
and forged the odd defacements
that widened arms to welcome
you to her world
you congratulated yourself
for noticing, for lifting your head --
you take more credit than due you
and ponder how a poem
could tell this broken story
and doing so
could open
your own disproportions
even as you journey
to Canterbury, Santiago,
Bodh Gaya or your own mailbox
filled with bills
widows weeds
and screens
that scorch your wisdom
wait at home
after rain, this rain
and this road to her
*
the path of letting go
falls under the broken tree
and here the quiver of the nameless
tugs on your shoulder
and still you call
her Sophia, thinking
you were Adam
allowed
to name it all,
to make the sounds
and rhymes
to sing her song
she’s there downslope now
and you walk to her
in a high wind of hope
then hear a drought-dry madrone
crash and crack close by
there’s danger in these trees
a rumble of hard rain
makes you stop --
you tire of toting
this bag of emptiness
you touch her three times
and, courageously, you ask her
to tell the thunder
to pull you
out of yourself
into the trees
and beyond --
you ache to go beyond
a few wet birds scurry and hop
at her bole where
they sing storm warnings
in the raining air
*
without arrows
the quest narrows
rainwater washes
your brow, your own salt
stings your eyes
yet you cannot turn
from her now
you sense
she senses you and gives you sense
you call her by her name
you believe it is her name
though it comes from the Bible,
movies, and the holy spirits
that aim your feet against the road
it’s like you’ve named each other
it’s like you toss atoms back
and forth to levy and load
time and space into your pack --
to make a possible
life with thick arms too --
arms spread wide
to hold all harm
as sacred proof
of how truth shatters
just enough to join the tree
and you, and whoever
hears a name uttered
in storms you cannot hide
it’s like you are ready
you are ready for what’s next
three touches on her rough wet skin
and you tell her
“let me say your name
and change my life”
rain comes early this fall
or so time’s habit alleges
a November skyful
of sun has drawn
a white flowering
from the black dirt
in the nearby hills
there you walk to celebrate
the season’s edges
where mycelia have woken
to see you
their roots connect
the broken will
in the underground –
here there is no place
that does not make you
on these humdrum trails
you walk to root out ignorance
and take steps to stop
the myriad screens
that first cause
a fake you
here fungi, not the lotus,
remind you
*
off the trail
on a small track
to the steep cliff
where the raw light falls
to the darkness
at the bottom
of Baldwin Creek draw
picnics once here
or prayers
leave breadcrumbs the size
of chasms
the lie in your grasp
has trampled the grass
on this edge
of your wilder nature –
your hand grips
the local rock
the coastal mudstone
crumbles as the path
comes to a crag
*
these small trails
are mysteries
and dead ends
leading to a leap
in the freefall
of dharmakaya –
the main trails:
thoughts begin
small trails:
thoughts end
you pay attention to beginnings
more than cessation
it is embarrassment,
isn’t it? the very peril
of what you think
in the end
the dark winks
to take contrivance
to the edge
and push it off
in a crevasse
in this crag of granite
two old junipers cling to the rock
they flatten their trunks
to join
in a small pocket of dirt
trunks like big barrels
have grown from a fissure
as wide as a wrist
ragged branches
hold dark green fans
up to the reaching sun
a trunk will narrow
as much as it needs to live --
no limit is the answer to the question you did not ask
your body does not differ
and clings to rock as well --
from bone your fruits form
though if the spine
finds space too small
it dries the sad marrow
two trees reach out
from old seeds in a small dark fracture
to teach how to survive in high places
the seeds of narrow and shifting miracles
implant in bones every day
to make a way from slender clay
to a sun of limits, known and unknown
though you have not loved others as yourself
you have not shifted with your whole heart
no matter, forgiven and forged by this granite bone
in this mountain day
the face of weathered stone
and the spine’s seeds have truly joined
for a brief green breath
that in this light reveals how narrow life can turn
in a slim crack cheating death
a seed will not waste the dirt or sky
in a way that’s wide enough
its way is wide
HR Harper is a writer living in the redwoods above Santa Cruz, California. A student of meditation and the emptying traditions, he writes to understand the nature of human consciousness in a natural world humans seem to be destroying. He began to publish in 2021. Several of his recently published poems and stories may be found at
https://brusheswiththedarklaw.blogspot.com
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