(no subject)

[projectmatt.livejournal.com]

MOUNTAIN
by, Matthew Rohrer


Mountain I’m sorry I gave

away your secret, sorry

I can’t dissemble

even to the very young,

I am opened completely,

ripped off of my hinges, I

get nervous even dreaming.

Mountain you are shrouded in

a dark bank of clouds, your true

face is never visible

from the grass, from the grass down

here, you give me a brief glimpse,

I see the bees, I smell them,

they smell like ladies, I see

them protecting a shining

secret, from the grass I see

the secret, I want to share

it, the boy doesn’t even

suspect, he’s too young to lie,

I’m too young to lie. Mountain

Laurels occlude the blue truth,

the Moutain Laurels awaken,

I pull them from a poem

where they had not taken root,

I’ll give them all back to you.

I think I see you smirking

at me when I dream, lying

about it won’t help. I dream

of people hiking all day

to reach me. The rain falls past

the mountain, dark banks of clouds

write themselves into a book

about the sun. The sun is

a cruel master, I was born

there. The Japanese mountain

is very old, the Chinese

mountain is cold. Lying prone

the sun passes me by. I

can’t keep it inside: the sun

uncorks inside each of us.

I try to tell the boy

about you, I dreamed

you were higher than the sun.

You shook your great grey shoulders

and it rained. Lying prone

most of this passes me by.

The bees don’t sting me, I puff

up, I puff up, I puff up.

I’m trying to send a call

up to the rain, to have it

blend in here, it’s miserable.

Stride right down the street like it

did then in Oklahoma

with my sister, we were on

bicycles, it was faster.

I have dream after dream and

you reach down to me, Mountain

of North American pines,

mountain of wild white orchids

blooming where they always bloom.

The Mountain Laurel wakes me

at night because its beauty

is ten-fold. I tried to bring

some home to her, whose beauty

is ten-fold, whose beauty

is lacustrine, but the Laurel

had fallen asleep. In dreams

it will write itself into

the cool cascading water

in the heart of the mountain,

where I’ve already written

us – me, asleep, her with her

ten-fold beauty breaking out

in the dark across her face.





listen to him read it here:
http://www.dfire.org/media/issue7/mountain.mp3

taken from:
http://www.dfire.org/x1107.xml