Igneous Poetry

Igneous poetry juts to the sky / Mother Earth’s ancient molten gift / birthed and hardened into a ridge line / a compass needle / showing us the way.

What makes a human heart / fall in love with a mountain so?

Wood and stone and feather / singing together to form this great song.

Altitude giving rise to diversity: / layers of life / attuned to different elevations / blend together through eco tones / birthing unique niches, / nooks where the butterfly fits / and takes flight. Altitude giving rise to snow caps / which give rise to streams / which give rise to life / which gives rise to love.

Slopes carving into the sky / an elevated home for Bear / to rest and harvest and birth / their families.

From these mountains we suckle the nourishment / borne of Creator’s majestic design. The world is tuned perfectly / before it can release / this symphony of life. We learned to respect / this attunement, / this balance / to support it / to protect it / to contribute to it.

Over time our arrogance was cut up / like a canyon cut open by mountain water. We learned the hard way / not to expect / but to respect / the generosity / of a mountain. Humility sparks a fire: / motivation to learn the language / of a mountain.

Only then can we write love letters she can clearly understand. / Letters not written on paper or in stone / but written into medicine bundles / offerings / written in the way smoke / curls up / into the sky.

Ephemeral poetry / etched into the air / by breath, / song, / punctuated by these pitiful, prayerful utterances.

It is enough, she says. / To give and receive with the Earth inside cycles of rain and snow. Some can hear the sound of eagle eggs hatching. / The crackle of good fire creeping along the ground, / which our ancestors applied to prevent catastrophic fire, / fires we applied to transform dead October grasses into life giving ash, / injected into meadow systems like a breath of life. / The deer will have food in the spring. / The deer who in turn gives his life so the people may live.

What could be more sacred than this?

This is how a human heart falls in love with a mountain.

Those with eyes, they can see. / For those without, they will learn to see soon enough. / Their hubris gives rise to mistakes / which give rise to broken systems / which give rise to famine / which gives rise to wisdom.

Until then we will be singing our song / steady as we can; / in a blizzard of bullets / against our people / we will sing onward, / we will sing anyways, / as our ancestors have. The mountain teaches us that / from the fires a flower is born.