By Sierra Miller/Kyle Chong
It's been almost a week of
White. Blue. Brown. Green. Orange.
Innumerable shades.
But today, just white, white, never ending white
Black shadows, nature arguing
Trees strongly holding their quivering ground against the howls
Snow dragged into contact
Pressured and carried by the wind, dappling and smacking the branches to the roots
Runoff gurgling in the parking lot, the meeting of nature and concrete,
Waterfalls cascading and tripping down old warped steps
Walls of snow, sculpted by footprints
Hurried paces to and fro on a clock
Languid steps. Stop. Go. Slow. Don't trip.
And then a full pause.
A huge breath, filling the soft silence with warm air.
Wonder.
Dark nights with bright skies.
So many shades of white and blue and black and shadow and light
It all glows before me
Past present future
Black White Blue
A winter wonderland?
There’s a lustrous blanket of snow
With a thin sheet of slush
Layers and layers
Patterns of dirt and twisted trees
Swirled and sculpted
Little windows to peak through to the end of the earth
All is fog
All is still
All is full
The cold slowly simpers away
The red on my cheeks remains
Not from an icy chill,
But from a glow
The trees are gnarled
Bent and droopy brown, brown,
But green pushes through,
Shades and shades
Black and white
To brown and brown
To green and grey
To orange and old bark
To wisps and glimmers
Haunted with the shadows of trees bent towards salvation?
Or full of relentless life, striving for growth,
And knowing,
Always knowing that the sun is coming?
It's not desolate or deserted
It’s living and contorted
It’s breathing and changing
It’s the hope of summers embrace,
After winter's icy kiss.
The silence isn't empty
It’s a promise
It's a story
It's a feast for the eyes,
And a crowbar to the mind
Which wanders and wanders,
As my feet carry me through
This summer's winter wonderland.
The lower you go, the warmer the air, and the sweeter the green
The higher you go, the crisper the cold, and the purer the silver.
Then a valley.
And they meet:
Blue mountain and golden green hill.
Sitting next to each other,
Like brothers, children of different times with symptoms of different seasons.
Fingers clasped,
Joined by the same waters flowing through their veins,
Forced apart by glaciers and rocks tumbling down
Like a line of dominos, or a fallen block tower
Little balls of dried out playdoh
To be meshed and mixed through time
Forming new golden hills, shaping and wearing mountains a true blue.
Yet these mountains are old:
Hear their age in the creak of their step,
See the crumbling crowfeet and wrinkles of avalanches down their face,
Feel the wisps of white circling their crowns,
Smell the old rains in the arthritic trees growing mossy at their feet,
Which proudly show all their knobs and knots and twists,
And stand tall to face the sun.
The young spirit of a petulant child, showing its power
The old wisdom of a faithful mountain
Towering over valleys and cities, waiting behind trees and clouds
Always there, always watching, always knowing what we only gape at,
The secrets of its golden hills and blue peaks.
All that power
It carves, It craves, It caves, It rages
All that water
It rushes, It hushes, It hustles, It rustles
I stand on this ridge and look down at the remains of rock falls and
Trees yearning to the wide gaping hole.
A cavern, a violent path of water
Destruction.
Creation.
Never mutually exclusive, like two Siamese twins connected for always and after.
A tree falls in the woods, if no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?
Too bad it doesn't matter, because it’s neither an ending nor beginning
It’s the turning of the page, the echo of it hitting the ground is only the whisper of the motion.
Not even the page, but a page, in one of an infinity of books, all being read simultaneously.
And who cares about books, thought the avid reader, as she stood on this ledge,
Staring down, down, down, to what looks like a small little stream,
but is actually thousands upon millions upon billions upon infinite drops of water
Rushing, hushing, hustling, and rustling down,
Carving, craving, caving, and raging on and upon this mountain.
This mountain that is so old, and so powerful,
That can erupt in ash and fire, stew in steam and lava, and rest in serenity.
So volatile.
So violent.
So vicious.
Yet,
So sacred
So constant
So peaceful
So mesmerizing.
That river streams down from glaciers to snow, to mountain rock, to gorge, to valley, to muddy river banks
Waterfalls everywhere.
Water falls everywhere.
The constant roaring, and whispering.
Little trickles catching the golden flakes of the sun, twinkling and gurgling in the light
And then a foot steps in and catches the slippery mossy rocks glowing within.
Just a bit up, it no longer is the contented dance of water flakes, it’s the pounding of a powerful and uncontrollable river, shaking and shaping everything it passes
Turning dense walls of stone, to melted piles with smoothed edges.
Better to be go with the flow than stand your ground.
Even after defying the water for ages, it’s beaten down.
The power of that muddy trickle, so very far away
It stretches forever, for all miles and all days.
It carves, witling new designs across the fire breathing mountain and below.
Scene V: Reflections
When the water is calm, the mountain gazes down on itself, while a perfect reflection stares up
But I’ve never seen the perfect looking glass, just ripples and waves, casting their mark on the mountain.
The outline is there,
The colors swirling, the trees that dot its foothills and the shore.
I find it better than seeing the perfect reflection every day,
The ripples show every facet, every potential, every possibility, the way
A perfect image
A perfect likeness
And perfection
Cannot.
