Dark Pieces Trilogy

Dark Pieces Falling. I

A seismic twitch
the dance of dying fish
the scrape of ocean plates
and screech of whales,
even the widened steam vents and
bulge beside the Goat Rocks
spoke more of my emergence
than my vengeance.
A morning sun only yellow,
a dark horse’s head cloud of
brain matter churning above the cone
amid the roar of Earth expanding.
I fertilized the sky with
dark pieces falling. I
smothered glowing sticks,
layered and stripped by the blast.
I spread far across Spring’s
tame spouts and
defiled the geometry of man.


Dark Pieces Falling. II

The sun glints. Your goggles fog.
Your breath hangs. Your crampons
scratch one last step and
there is no more Up. Across
you see the ice-worlds, floating
on a mirror of clouds.
Rainier, Adams, Hood are
white ghosts of Indian legends. They
personify the stony Earth,
the Mother, the everlasting Earth
you climb, you crawl, you sit, you lie,
embracing what now is gone –
the Earth which loves you.
Off the summit by noon. Only
the memory is unchanging.

Loose, jagged rocks echo long
from talus piles. The mist
from the falls and your sweat fill your face.
Like clouds releasing rain
to climb the Cascades, you
precipitate the fear, worry, and
anger which hang so low.
So low you are alive.
Alive in this landscape, you
are only mortal.

You once thought these mountains were gods.
You came here to find eternal
permanence in dead rock, ice, and sky.
You came to these mountains to feel
more alive than mortal
but sainthood is everlasting
as permanent as death.
You came to these mountains to scream
against slow rock life
you thought was death and your cry
was lost in the upper winds like
teardrops in an ocean, like
hot steam venting, like
strange shadows growing, like
dark pieces falling. Ear
to the ground now. Hear
unseen rock scraping deep below.
You came to this mountain to listen
to sacred rock and blessed ice
and it told you it was alive. It said,
“I’m not a saint.”



Dark Pieces Falling. III

Dark pieces falling, nose
tethered short against sulfuric burning.
Everywhere we walked through brush and weeds
the talc transferred to our jeans.
Handkerchiefs over mouths,
our shoes raising swirls,
our wild eyes scanned the ghost lake
at Ike Kinswa as calm as
pavement, dry as salt,
covered flat with grey ash.

Headlights only yellow
and filters straining hard
we drove in thick visibility,
a churning wake behind us
in the semi-solid air.

On what was left of the Toutle,
trout jumped the banks; a preference
to be breaded in rock dust rather
than boiled in torrid mud.
Outside the Ash Zone
twenty-five miles west by northwest
on a ridge we stretched and breathed as
our awed eyes reflected
earth and sky turning inside out
above Saint Helen’s agony.