Mountain

Beholder

I do not understand.
But I can feel.

This world builds
prisons
for each of us.

To be born
is one thing;
yet another
to grow into the cage
they give you.

Beauty,
Power,
Lineage,
/
Bars,
Locks,
Chains.

It is


exhausting,

lonely,

cruel;


and for you,
the same, but

manifold
  logarithmic
   multiplied
    perpetual
     incessant
      relentless

This is why I am so pleased
you have learned
to pick the locks
or slip between the bars
or simply disapparate,
escaping
when you want to.

Listen.


You are not

an image.


You are

an interior.


You are

a cathedral

with many rooms

and stained glass in sunlight

and libraries

and catacombs.


You are

a book

with 1,000 pages

and many chapters,

including the unwritten.


You are

a mountain,

fitted in a flowing garment of forests,

dotted with deep caverns,

drinking lightning in summer,

content under frost and snow in winter,

filled with granite and obsidian,

quartzite and gold.



You survive all fire.


You navigate by starlight.


You leave ripples in the world.


You are a microcosm.


You are a garden.


You are a home.


The waves break themselves on your shores.


This is why no cage will contain you.


You are.

song of the multitude

she is multitude

she contains ecosystems
she is immense
filled from edge to edge with wilderness

she bathes in nightfall
and walks with death

she heals the forgotten and the outcast
moves in silence through shadow

sleeps in a mantle of tranquility

and like a leaf unfurling
bursts from joy in the light of dawn

she weaves her web on the strongest boughs

she watches from the high ground
of the mountain
and listens in the low places
of the valley

she can see the small things
and hear the small voices
of the earth

her hawk-sight soars far through the air

her song is water flowing over rock

she is guided by the stars

she is interlinked

her eye is uncovered

she is the dry country drinking the monsoon rain

her mind is the undersoil network electric
of the ancient forest
from mycorrhizae to heartwood
where the hare darts through the unrolling ferns

her heart is the cumulonimbus
towering anvil thunderstorm
lightning arcing into the dust and the dirt
where the coyote runs over the darkening desert

her soul is the deep of the estuary
where the ocean welcomes the river
after its long journey
where the salmon come home

once in every circuit
of our planet
around our sun

in this furthest arm of our galaxy
spattered among the deep space countless
where gravity bows before the unknown

she is multitude