Cloud Mountain (Autumn Poem)

I.

Autumn falls, silver, in tune

Breaking the soporific spell that held us

You smell it first on the seaways

Then inland, on currents of air

On gusts, on plumes –

You see it first on the face of the moon

A new warmth even as we go cold in its light

A new warmth that lasts through myriad cold and dreaming nights

My love, I need you to warm me

As I, reciprocally, warm you

Gaze benevolently down from your heights upon me

Cold and sad and missing you

Wondering why I shy away when you, in your warmth, come to me

A lantern in my frost-breath loneliness

To warm me, to hold me

Knowing I am alone, regardless, when the ghosts sleep.

And. Wondering.

Alone. But why?

 II.

 The mysterious north comes down

With smell of ghosts in passageways

Stealing inward with a glance

I view, afar, the downwind summer days

Knowing that I must accept

That the season of clouds has gone

That the season of light has come

It’s the season when days retract

The season of refracted sun

The rivers are low and sinking lower

Covered in flotsam like a skin

Why as I grow do I get smaller?

Why does discipline only turn me in?

III.

And now I know that I must journey

To where, in a cabin on a hill, above the low rivers

Below the spire that punctures the clouds

You sit, in meditation, in candlelight

Dreaming of me and what I might have been

Has the world left me behind or I it?

Was it mutual, a brief harmonious split?

Or have I just lost my way

Trying in vain to breathe in all of the scents of abscission?

If we are whole then what of this division?

Outside looking in or inside looking in

I no longer even fathom the place where the bright waters meet

I cannot even see the moon through the canopy of trees

Is it waxing?

Waning?

Stuck in between?

Is its warmth but imagined?

Is it a cutout on string?

A rock, a satellite

An incomprehensible thing?

Gazing into the small, dancing light, you do not answer

But that is alright

For the ways, pathless, have led me to you

And the knowing that you are here is enough

For tonight

IV.

Autumn wind, sing to me

Old friend with bitter, arid tongue

Whisper to me of places vast and far away

Dance through branches with desiccated glee

Warm me, chill me, turn me inward

Wake me

Lull me to sleep

The stars, I whisper, blindly run

The traces – all swept clean away

Shine down on us, you billion tiny suns

Your warmth, mine

Both are faraway

V.

Show me the way to Cloud Mountain

Though the ways are hard and steep I do not mind

For I have been in the foothills only

But a measure above the arid plains

Believing to have scaled the lofty heights and

Dizzy with my own accomplishments

Did not even realize whereupon I stood at morning or evening

Did not even realize that, above me, looming, lit, like a great cathedral

In the day’s, the year’s, last rays

You stood, looming.

Above me.

Looming

A rock, a monolith.

A god.

Show me – no, lead me – to Cloud Mountain

Though I love the lowlands and strive always, despite the costs, to go South in winter

Though I love the warm verdant breath of the lowforests on my face –

A warm comfortable friend telling stories of my comfortable youth –

I know that I must take the ways, though being hard and steep

That, though I long to laze

I have promises, if only to myself, to keep

That I must ascend to where

The forests are fed perpetually by the clouds

And the sun is a weary stranger who stays only briefly and leaves fast

Where one, when finding one’s vista uninterrupted

Can see, uncorrupted,

The world bend at last

The lights of distant cities, though luminous

Diminished to that of a wavering candleflame

Into which one (meaning I)

Gazes during evening meditations

In my shadow grove, outside the door of the small place

Upon the small hump which I believed to be the summit

The apex

Of all to which I have aspired

I raise my damp, unshaven face

And I am tired

And I am meek

And though the night is warm and filled with stars

I long to go to sleep

No matter that the air, this close to the valley, is fine

No matter that the spire, rising, backlit by starlight, is no nearer

(No matter that you aren’t either)

The morning will come

And after reading, and bathing, and meditation

And after taking a long time shaving

I will feel right, pure, awake

And will begin the climb which I know I must undertake

(Sure I know the way)

For the climb’s sake

To where the spire looms

To where the face of the moon, day pale but incontrovertibly there,

Beckons me on

Fixes me with beckoning, incontrovertible stare

VI.

The clouds grow thick

And my blanket warm

The candle dances, leans drunkenly, dances

And then is no more

(And high up, it has begun to snow.)