M O U N T A I NÂ Â Â Â Â 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.
                                                               Â
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.Â