At the Divide

Samuel Moon

The spreading valley
and the rocks exist
in two times: time
of their slow shift
and sharpening thrust,
time of the mind's
descent, the shift
and thrust of memory.

I come to these mountains
            as to a source.

This chain of rocks,
handhold and toehold
lichen and moss,
forms, dissolves
beneath the touch
of sensibility,
continuity
in the touch
itself moving,
memory gathered up
into the touch
itself changing.

      the ascent beckoned

At the Divide,
August 21st:
back to the wind


blowing from a snowfield,
end of a long line
followed to its end,
gathering the memory:
what we do not live
as it passes dies,
falls away
from the shape of the memory,
what we have lived
heart to heart
grows heart and lives.

         The descent beckons
                 as the ascent beckoned

A soft sun droning
in the low meadows,
white water
falling for miles
in the rocks, the high lakes
brown and clear
rock-rimmed in grassland,
near timberline
a dead valley
of twisted trees
burnt over long ago
blasted white
and nothing growing
to replace them,
              so
the ascent dissolves
below me, fixed
in another time,
unfixed gathered
in the memory, here

                      Memory is a kind
        of accomplishment
possessing itself
complete and beautiful
moves with the moving
touch, changes,
as it changes
the sensibility.

a source, a beckoning
           source. ...

The ascent stretches
accomplished before me,
surprising around each
corner of the memory,
        a sort of renewal
that is itself
the descent, or part of it,
every descent
another climb,
new ground
and the old ground new,
these mountains a source
                       even
        an initiation
a turn but no return.

Descending now
into new country,
I leave nothing
behind in the rocks.
Out of the mist
of another morning

                                 SAMUEL MOON

new places
loom into form,
       since the spaces it opens are new places
handhold and toehold
lichen and moss,
under the touch
of a sensibility
opened by the memory.

Gradually now
in the growing morning
the spreading valley
and the sharpening rocks
clarify the sight.

      THIS TWISTING

       Yesterday we bent
       to each other
       all our hope,

       this twisting
       is the labor
       of our love,

       tomorrow close
       we will turn, counter-
       turn in the fire.