The Mountain is Alive

September 29th, 2023

Around this time last year, I started to consider colors of landscapes more abstractly: imaging that everywhere I travelled to a new color would become more apparent to me. When I think of home, Western Maryland (Appalachia) I think of infinite greens and browns among the rolling mountains. It all started with the following poem where I imagine/remember myself on the one mile ascent to one of the mountains peaks––where the old water tower used to sit. A spot Walker and I frequented. A spot I have returned to innumerable times: when deciding where to go to college, before my first big trip abroad to Doha, and before my most recent adventure of Thailand! I hope in reading this poem, you can picture it too.

The Mountain is Alive

The mountain I grew from

to a stranger’s eye

Is as brown and green

as it is vast and wide

Granted glimpses of glimpses

with every step and every sentence

accents form in the mountain’s ascent

defenses lower

as senses heighten

to the tune of the forgotten ridge

Here where there is no end

the play begins

in slow quiet strides

so as not to disturb

the dance of the wild

I ask politely to join in

To mingle with oaky neighbors

and black bear’s berries’ flavors

to harmonize with rumbling toads

to float above the windin’ road

the first act concludes as

I jump out and over the tree line

to witness the sublime possibilities

to imagine what is beyond sight

Here, the mountain welcomes my company

I begin to think only in sunlight

between tall golden grasses green

whose gasps for air

allow the mountain to breath breathes of

sweet honeysuckle grasping apple trees

Here, the mountain offers a sweet release

to those willing to hear only in

whistling birds who warn the rest of us not to neglect the peace

and mind our feet as we graze

past resting copperheads and fragile plants

Here, it is clear

The mountain is alive

As I lie in her soft touch

I focus my gaze on the shades

of green and brown in front of me

I count 21 shades of green,

yet the palate hints at tinges of blue

on the periphery,

colors I have yet to meet

the mountain reminds me

that I must go

to other summits, to other worlds

so that one day I may return

with shades in every color.

A more recent poem written on my 15 hour flight from DC to Seoul last week (09/21):

Irregular Orbits

There it was again

The mountain, the girl

No blue existing without green

Singing to itself

to setting suns & rising moons

silencing stories

old as the cosmos, novel as the second

The mountain and the girl

held periodic visits

In irregular orbits of longing and belonging

ensured by daily dedications

to details inside eyelids

to inscriptions within dreams

As if a single mountain

so steady, so sure

could live under skin so human

As if a pair of wings in the lightest of blues could be tethered

to the tips of golden grasses

waving as if to say goodbye

as if to say I remember

to the dancing shadow

In seasoned air so sweet how

it illicits such bitterness in those apples

it asks of the tongue,

It assures the mind

It reminds these eyes

in other cities in other worlds of colors

so blue & so green

To know, the mountain

would always be there

within her

and there it would be

long after her

return