I entered the life of the brown forest,
And the great life of the ancient peaks,
the patience of stone
I felt the changes in the veins
In the throat of the mountain,
and, I was the stream,
Draining the mountain wood;
and I the stag drinking:
and I was the stars,
Boiling with light, wandering alone,
each one the lord of his own summit;
and I was the darkness
Outside the stars, I included them,
They were part of me.
I was mankind also, a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone ...
they have not made words for it...
~ Robinson Jeffers, “Not Man Apart”
MOSS
How must it be
to be moss,
that slipcover of rocks?--
imagine,
greening in the dark,
longing for north,
the silence
of birds gone south.
How does moss do it,
all day
in a dank place
and never a cough?--
a wet dust
where light fails,
where the chisel
cut the name.
— Bruce Guernsey
from Peripheral Vision, Small Poetry Press, Pleasant Hill, CA
Poetry Garden
