Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Bill Denham, Mount Tam at Dusk
Mount Tam at dusk
If I walk through my front door,
step off the stoop,
swing my body to the left
and start toward the hills,
the hills that hide from me
the sun’s early morning rays,
the ground beneath my feet falls away,
slowly at first, then with more speed,
till it bottoms out at the first cross street
and begins a rapid ascent
that takes an effort to mount.
And if I stop to catch my breath
half way up this steep slope,
and if the day is over
and the sun is dropping
into the sea
and all around me
will soon grow slowly gray,
and if I turn, as I rest,
look back over the pass,
I have a near clear view
through the crisscrossed wires
that hang from poles on the edge of my sight,
of that familiar shape the earth takes—
the rise and dip and rise and fall
of Mount Tam across the bay.
And if the sky is cloudless,
the summer evening air crystalline and cool,
I see the edge of the earth glow red
along its dark, rough spine—fire red,
as air burns to touch the mountain top,
cools to magenta, to mauve, to light pink, to nearly white,
this thinnest of blankets, this rarest of good night kisses
from the deepening, clear, gray, blue, early evening sky.
And if I turn again toward the hills,
I find a lightness in my step,
a joy in my breath.
- Bill Denham
(Note: the picture is not of Mt. Tamalpais, but rather the mountain I see when I step out on my balcony. I like this poem because it captures the intimate relation between the human observer and the natural scene he perceives. Kundalini often has the effect of making us even more in tune with the natural world around us.)
