Mountain ranges and slowly sloughed debris,
Free of place or just falling as snow once did,
Back to earth, back to water, timid
As all who never escape time.

Her little sister is talking with me about
The temple to such things she was painting
With an avid certainty.

Certainly possible, always said as from old or for new or
Box cars clunking to a brake stop on the parallel lines of track.
Smooth and cold can be the lines to reason with,
Messy and warm her masterpiece at the altar of things
Recollecting breakfast and getting up early
For the space of the place to go above tree line,
Ambitious even in deep snow,
Knowing the shoulders of the ridge
Are as the giants left us
As we know them as they knew us only as theory and speculation.
It is a little more wide open than that,
A little darker at the plate of souls swinging bats for the fences.
A little more old fashioned if always up to date.

Premonitions are not the same as presumptions
And she paints on, a dab here, a smear over where the style calls
For her berry breath or when the high lake goes quiet,
But for its ripple of wind in the dark.
The voice of her call is the silence and so everywhere
And always asking after us of those injured preternaturally.
Not all up for grabs.
More like settling lower like water by gravity
Lifted by the heat of the sun and the roiling clouds
And the horizon and tomorrow.

She came this way once,
Over the pass and down the other side,
Paying a little more attention,
Giving up some time to think things through again.

You have heard about circles I imagine,
Carrying all returns in their tails and
Seeing effortlessly ahead to the end of all things,
The final rest among the others
Like a boulder field on an incline,
A line of scree near the summit,
The blowing snow wailing,
Traveling in a circle from the land,
Again telling of our hunger and need and
Her warmth full of the bard’s old tricks,
The token romance of Goddess and man.

We get bored of our things and throw them down.
Even the farmer puts his seeds in the ground,
The best crops a long ways beyond now.
Plaster of Paris, supplice, wet and white,
The mummy’s rags trailing in Halloween mud, thrown,
Taken back home to explain how people grow for next time,
The future forever perfecting her craft and in a sudden,
Like a car, gone in a bag of dimes.
Recollect if you will that moment of tumult,
Falling with splinters on our masterpieces,
Our tuning fork on high resemblance and
The math adding up
To better optics and a finer line.

Call as you will
As a bleating lamb on a wild hill,
Who comes, who cares,
Who says your meal is worth waiting for, do come again.
And again and again the rain drops dimple
And the sound of the high lake,
Still but for its reflections on spreading circles and merging,
Sinking cool or warm to rise on convection’s law.
All is enough,
Why always to add another
“Who said, she said” to the mix.

Ballyhoo and bravado,
Coursers and braids of gold and trim of lacquer,
Crowd of liquor, quick to the gates, paying to come in,
First or second, the horses explode from the starting gate and
Run in the flying mud their hoofs make on a wet day,
Worlds worth of youthful ardor,
Laying down her lanes and lines and
On the shoulder of sweat, the horse stretches her neck.

The field runs up to the shore and the waves crash
Like the avalanche coming down the mountain
And the hosanna and the dream of freedom,
The myth of the running bulls clacking down
The stone village lane and the break and blood of bone
And Hannibal and his army,
The misery at the past risking the very name
For some more abstracts on hearing and the law,
The low moan before the Senate of another end dying,
Asking of what it is to be born?

By Rolf Stavig
2/5/2023