A hundred miles before the mountains
they appear on the horizon
misty as clouds, in fact I think they're clouds.
They don't look substantial enough for mountains
I could see right through them; they can't be rock
covered with trees and moss and streams. Then
the sun shines off a snow cap and I know
they're real.
___________They become solid on the horizon
and suddenly it seems I'm there inside
mountains behind and still in front
until they're everywhere I look, surrounding
me. The sky becomes a circle.
There is no horizon, only mountains
like walls up to the blue sky ceiling.
There is no flat, only rocks crawling
up as far as up. Pines twisted
into cracks on the stones reaching
for a piece of sky. And the circle
of sky is filled to brimming with clouds
tall as the mountains, brimming over mountains
bursting bright over the edge of rocks.
Amid these mountains I forget now
the flat places I came from. The world
is vertical now, and I'm on top looking
down into valleys watching eagles
catch the breezes through the cliffs, hiking
through forests lost in trees pines and aspens
and looking up to mountains down to ground
below the ground I walk on.
___________Coming back
I always watch until they lose their form
become misty as clouds again behind.
The world becomes flat as a circle again
and up ahead, in the wrong direction,
the clouds low on the horizon sunlit
look so real I swear I could drive
right to them, look so much like mountains.
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