Saturday, April 21, 2012

Saint Francis Climbs a 14'er



 
Salvation! At 14,000 feet.
Grace floods in colors filling the thin, rich air.
God visited the earth, and it overflowed.

Creation! Look, there’s a river like an artery.
It fills the ice blue alpine lake
Where Elk take the Eucharist, and are regenerated.

Breathe your breath, on trees like brush strokes.
Reveal your face in billow clouds and contrails.
And in the distance there is El Diente, orange
And copper, like a sunset basilica.

I’ll keep climbing mountains!
Sweat is a blessing, slow scree-field steps
Attesting to glory, this pinnacle,
This sentinel of the ether.

Stand watch to thunderstorms that
Saturate the green valley, leaving rainbows
And promise, a Colorado covenant.

And below is the San Juan,
Crystal rapids cover purple stones,
Boulders jut forth and make eddies
A place to pause, a Sanctuary, where
I submerge, a mountain baptism,
Unsullied, mountain clean.

And night! There’s Hesperus
Alpha and Omega navigating the firmament
Charting its eastward course
Against stars like words in the good book
Writ glowing on the black and purple.

Campfire theology:
There’s Genesis, Proverbs, The Gospels.
There’s fire-eyed Revelations
And the new heaven and earth of dreams
Asleep under Venus’s flight.

Awake to coyotes, speaking in tongues.
Songs of haunting praises, urging the creeping
Pinks of morning from the east.

Awake to new blue revealing outlines of
Quaking aspens, shaking off the chill
Frozen breath and cowboy coffee
Warm whispers, and words
Written on my heart. 

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