Mountain Bliss

 

M O U N T A I N      B L I S S

 

Branching overhead

The great maple

Umbrella

Covers the sky.

 

Marching up the mountain stairs,

Stately Deodar pines ascend

Surrounding me, augustly,

Tall, bottle-green sentinals.

 

The clear air

Stirs a summer dance

Of flashing leaves

And gliding butterflies

Everywhere.

 

This cheeky Magpie,

Longtail trailing phosphorescence

Flits, branch to branch,

Now high, now falling low,

Feasting carnivore.

 

                                                                

With Himalayan impertinence

Perches within reach, defiantly,

Bright yellow beak, unfriendly eye,

My gross intrusion spies.

 

Then suddenly tweaks the tail

Of my slumbering dog,

Become danger to her nest.

 

Cicadas fill the ears

With mountain music,

Their eerie castanets resound

Through the forest’s silence

Where pine-needles flash

And pregnant cones fall,

An infant pine to imbed.

 

Thoughts begin to rest,

Descending in a spiral vortex,

Strangely induced unexpectedly

By this other world here

Of sublime heights.

 

As commanding snows

In a range

Declare divinity,

Raising the spirits

With rare wonder

Of thoughtlessness.