At the Divide

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.