July 14 Five Lessons on Medicine Bow Peak

July 14

Five Lessons on Medicine Bow Peak

I

The moss campion

lifts her purple head

only slightly

from her bed of moss.

She holds to the ground

for if she aspired to a taller

beauty,

the alpine winds

would whip

her slender neck in two.

II

Snowmelt begat Nashfork,

Nashfork begat Westbranch,

Westbranch, Laramie, Laramie,

North Platte,

North Platte begat Platte,

Platte begat Missouri, Missouri,

Mississippi, Mississippi, the Gulf,

the Gulf begat Atlantic, the oceans,

the ocean begat rain,

and the rain, life.

III

The glacier lily hangs like a yellow bell

on her swan-neck stem,

she and her sisters

lifting the snow around them,

pushing the barren edges

of great ice fields

with warm and golden music.

IV

The Engleman spruce is only half alive,

his twisted body grey and cracked,

ahundred years

or more

years old,

and at his fingertips

the new green of growth contends

with wind and snow,

becomes a Baroque spire

in a sacred dance.

V

Across snow field, boulder field,

we follow the cairns,

altars of the god of travel, and we

do not lose our way.

As the clouds bear down, obscure our

path.

We come to feel Medicine Bow,

a giant beneath our feet, her

boulder-covered back

a great cairn the glacier left,

saying,

Follow me,

I moved this way

with power

to carve the mountains.

And we will not lose our way.