It is here, high in the mountains
on some wind-blasted ridge
that one comes face to face
with Creation.

Here the lifeforce
that makes stone
is struck, blown, fractured
sent on its journey
to becoming soil, bird wing, badger
and eventually
sea floor.

But right here on this mountain,
in this vast silence
a radical explosion, a silent monumental collision
is taking place,
as Creation collides with the elements
and Earth is flung up into the sky
and wind and ice and gravity
are rattling her massiveness.

In every direction are cracks that burst mountainsides,
house-sized boulders thrown across to the other side of the canyon.
everywhere are shards and flakes
and hunks in
this stillness.
A billion, billion sharp edges
yet with whole valleys
scraped smooth by rivers of ice.

And the verticality of it all cuts its own horizon,
one so out of my norm that I disorient.
Is all this rock coming down
or going up?
And how is it that my little steps and panting breath
carry me over this terrain in awe and ant-like?
Yes, this land is exploding into a million
edges and angles.
Earth, sky, water and fire are so in evidence here.

My challenge is only to be as real as they are.
Am I up to it?

Can I let my fire burn enough to spur me
to the beckoning corners, ridges and peaks?
Can I temper this with my flowing nature,
moving with ease and pace enough
to get there and back?
And with sufficient clarity and force-
enough air in my lungs and fortitude in my flesh
to step well and gracefully?
And not step on the loose rock
that will send me hurtling down
like any other fragment of this mountain?
And this is my goal actually,
not to surrender yet to gravity,
but to know what it is to be a fragment of this place
where the great forces of Creation are meeting.

And isn’t this always happening everywhere,
only here the volume is so loud
and the static so low
that I get the message straight and clear?

                                      -- Dave Talamo