Dwarfed By Mount Takoma

Dwarfed By Mount Takoma
© Surazeus
2024 05 24

If that strange gold glow after evening rain 
saturates my mind with visionary thoughts, 
excited awake by cracks of thunder, time 
may pause, intent as tall unmoving trees 
that wait with expectation that I choose 
to do nothing, mute owl in the oak tree. 

Though my body pulses with thick content 
of atoms packed in small frame of my soul, 
my mind broods over bottomless abyss 
to hear voice of the Earth in flow of light 
surging with each plodding beat of my heart 
to bear my body-bound soul beyond time. 

Yet time constrains slow motion of my mind 
in bright sea waves of endless words, that swirl 
with sensual flash of memories, which record 
countless moments of my life in the past, 
reflected in leaves that hang in gold air 
in vast suburban landscape of our world. 

Though I now lounge in haven of my home, 
gazing out large windows at quiet street 
where families stroll in peaceful paradise, 
I ponder hour forty-four years ago 
when I climbed up steep winding mountain trail 
past shadowy pines where no demons lurk. 

Heart pounding with assertion of calm will, 
far from large noisy crowds of my schoolmates, 
I emerged alone on broad meadow slope, 
rugged with jagged rocks and twisted pines 
in deep valley of gushing waterfalls, 
dwarfed by Mount Takoma, my Helicon. 

Enormous mountain that looms over me, 
fourteen-thousand feet above the blue sea, 
last flaming smoke five hundred years ago, 
broods with solemn majesty of great power 
more serene than Olympus where fierce gods, 
my ancestors feared, toyed with mortal lives. 

No earth-born brood of Uranus and Gaia, 
not fierce Jehovah, nor ferocious Jove, 
strides gigantic on icy silver peak 
to meddle in wars between nation-states 
through social ideologies, employed 
by presidents to justify their rule. 

No conscious spirit but me, wingless angel 
evolved from mice when dinosaurs ruled Earth, 
stands fragile before benign mountain god 
that gleams indifferent to my happiness, 
so I choose to celebrate my keen life 
with hymns brief as breath of my carefree voice.