March 25, 2009

And here on the top shelf of the world
between stones that have never moved
and the mountain cactus that flowers
like some unworn corsage,

I have come to sit and write this
unwritten poem.

I am sure that I am not the first
to poetically describe the snaking stream
that leaps halfway down the mountain.

And I am sure that I am not the first
to pen a short heroic couplet about
the snow that crowns the regal mountain's peaks
and how like chipping paint it peels away.

The sky ahs long now been a subject
of admiration and the prima donna
that is the sun, with her grand exits and
entrances will no longer earn my ink.

I think, instead, the poem I am
here to write is of a small ant
who has with his sticky legs been
climbing in and out of my Alpine landscape.

My poem will not begin or end with
him, it will only graze him as a tangent
does an arc, as I am sure his eyes have noticed
and unnoticed me, a small god
sitting on a rock that is the world.