By David Stallings © 2005
We hike into cold
sandblaster wind that pits
the hides of car finishes.
Miles up a rough
sloping fan into foothills,
we pause, chunk
rocks into sample
piles, record mineral content.
From this we draw implications
about the Rockies’
stony heart.
Clouds part as we leave.
Suddenly
we are blinded
by countless suns,
each reflected from one-sided
rock mirrors polished like shields
by eastwardly
migrating grit.
Thoughts of data and warm
roadhouse vanish,
and
we skip dazzled
through
a [...]
By David Stallings © 2004
Coming out of upper Cameron Basin,
then along Lillian Ridge where
mountain wizards craft energy candies
in rock grottoes under
full moons.
Beyond attention, effortless airy
shadow inspects rock slides,
stubby grasses, dried
bluebells and asters.
Marmot monks,
stationed like signal fires,
rip the silence, lump
toward burrow holes.
Raptor vision,
swift shadow,
echoing whistles bring an urgent
scale to the land.
Forget pain in knees,
long day, heavy pack.
Breathe the distances,
find a [...]
By David Stallings © 2004
We climb the Townsend Creek trail
through rock and misted colors
of aster, lupine, paintbrush.
High on a grassy bench we rest.
Ariel, a year and a half old,
wrapped in lambskin
she calls Fuzzy,
speaks out loud to no one,
The clouds are the mountain’s
Fuzzy.
(No. 88 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
By David Stallings © 2003
Positive
a remembered mountain
lies around this bend in the trail;
more dense forest.
Leaving the theater,
searching for my car,
turning in the wrong
direction.
Driving around my Island
home of thirty years,
shortest routes elude me.
I’ve always been this way.
Each time illusions melt,
chaos,
providing a fresh chance
to see.
(No. 98 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
By David Stallings © 2003
Hike the Upper Dungeness Trail,
then up a ridge west of Camp Handy.
Steep old fisherman’s track
under July afternoon sun.
Thirty steps, gasping stop, thirty more,
my old legs and asthmatic lungs struggling
to keep up.
Admire huge tree boles and lush delphinium
before starting again.
Then Goat Lake at last,
air brilliant and snowmelt bubbly.
Bugs not bad, good night’s sleep.
But say, just how [...]
By David Stallings © 2003
Sometimes friends share the climb
of Cold Mountain.
On a middle slope,
Jack stops to pee—
a large circle in the dusty path.
“If you guys can say something about that,
then let’s go on,” he challenges.
Larry steps into the circle,
sits like a mountain top.
I curtsey to his stone figure.
“If you characters can do that,
we just won’t go on,” Jack asserts.
“What [...]
By David Stallings © 2003
Past Last Water Camp, my dog and I
wind up the north trail,
wading deep sprawls of snow
obscuring the way.
Left behind is my city job
and the softness of a woman at dawn.
Yet worries swirl
as I ascend through mist.
I cough a blaze onto the snow,
a shock of redness.
My lungs may be the end of me.
Route finding now, I [...]
By David Stallings © 2002
Climb the Big Quil trail often
and you’ll feel the mountain’s moods,
know the flowers’ changing faces.
Today the wind blows clouds in two directions,
and through the fog
old snags seem to have new growth.
At Marmot Pass the mist makes
your whole life shimmer.
Every day is a good day to make the climb.
