Transcendence

image borrowed from bing

Transcendence

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

are of imagination all compact.”

--William Shakespeare.

A dun hawk with scorching thermals

beneath its short wings 

baptized the hot air

with its sibilant cry, 

echoing off cliffs and probing

the depths of shimmering canyons

as it spiraled over us, 

its darting shadow

kissing thousands of dead white logs

cast about like Asgaardian kindling

after a pair of logger gods 

had tromped over the foothills.

Sarge and I 

were merely two tiny figures

within the vastness of the clear-cut,

moving like field mice, 

like ants on a sequoia,

scurrying along the craggy back 

of cluttered trails that wandered 

through the broken discarded timber,

both silent, 

sweating in the afternoon swelter,

both listening 

to the susurrous shaman wind

hissing in its ancient tongue.

At road’s end near timberline

we rested in the cool shade

of a red outcropping, thrusting

out from the mountain’s shoulder,
his handsome head busy lapping

up warm canteen water from my palm,

just a man and his dog staring

at the bristle-cone ancient pines

that dotted the escarpment above,

bent like crones from their thousands of years

of standing there 

beyond the axe,

beyond the folly, 

their bark mostly shed,

their bodies nearly petrified, 

their branches creating a series of spiracles,

a helix that breathes rarified air,

a holy nest for angels and eagles

to roost in during the darkness,

trees that are older than any empire,

that began their growth in 3000 BC,

when the Neolithic Period was ending,

when Caral was built in Peru

as the first city in the Americas,

when Troy was founded,

when the Sumerians began to work with various metals,

as Stonehenge was beginning to be erected,

as the potter’s wheel was invented in China

and hieroglyphics began as writing in Egypt.

At twilight we were still toiling

leeward along the green lane,

happy to spot your smoke,

happy to hear the music,

anxious to share

the gentle wisdom we had gained

from our sojourn with the ancestors.

Glenn Buttkus

August 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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