“You were once a mountain. You were once a cloud. This is not mystical or poetic speech, It is science.”
Thich Nat Hanh i) I remember when I was a mountain, sitting cross-legged deeper than a seed in the earth, so deep that the earth’s firmament, molten, churning, spitting, was a boiling ball in my belly. Sitting thus, grounded firmly in my seat, I shot upward, my broad shoulders crashing through the earth’s crust, my neck long, head held high. My arms stretched up over my head, palms together; in prayer, a desire to touch heaven. Some days my fingers would tickle and tease the clouds and they would open, releasing their water down over my body - snow or ice might drift and fall, dusting my every feature, or build into great masses that would then calve and tumble crashing down like beasts too fast down a steep hill. At other times rain, washing down to collect in pools in my eye sockets, in the hollows above my collarbones, in tempest streams it might loosen the shale and pebble of my skin, shedding it rumbling down my sides, or, where I was made of clay, it would mix and commingle to create a slick sluice of runny mud, all reds and ochres and rusts and greys, so that I might know the ecstasy of slippery things. My hair, a matted tangle of roots and bushes and vines, tall trunks, branches, leaves, fruits berries, sustaining all manner of beast as they slithered, lumbered, swung, climbed, and flew, each to their own nature. Great eagles would would nest on the bony prominences of brow and crown and clavicle, would perch on vertiginous, cartilaginous heights of nose and the tops of my ears, shudder and swoop away with violent purpose, soaring and circling around my head, their fiery gleaming eyes searching for prey below. Talons clench and release, clench and release. So too do I remember being a cloud, shifting in shape, vague of boundaries and borders, but even more so of intention. Mostly I just followed Wind wherever she went; she was my older sister, my mother, my grandmother. I remember prickling with electricity, pulsing with light, water molecules expanding and contracting, as is their nature. I was shaped and moved by currents of air, pressure and temperature shifts. I think I may have had a short life, eventually dissipating completely, or maybe my cloud life was a continuum of recombining, interconnected lives. I don’t remember which. I do remember my dreams were soft and floating. ii) I am, have been, and will be, mountain; solid-seeming, all-powerful, unmoving, yet dust by pebble, pebble by dust, I am dying, migrating, changing. I am, have been, and will be, cloud; indeterminate, shapeshifting, laden with moisture and grey hues, yet I am dying, dissolving through white into thin air against blue. mountain cloud body spirit earth fire water air form and substance i am nothing i am such
2 Comments
jeannie lochrie
10/19/2015 06:24:14 pm
beautiful writing, shannon. i'm feeling the elements coursing through my being as i read your poetics.
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Paula
10/20/2015 01:49:59 am
Oh Shannon, this is such beautiful writing. Visual. And my whole body followed.
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