by Mark Fischweicher
From the trailhead on the road, in 15 minutes time,
a short but steep section takes you out of the chaos
of winter melt, up the southeast face of Round, into the remains of Friday’s sudden frost
and your first view of what it had done to the buds and branches with its icy
touch, turning them all into a glistening tangle of shining
light, as if Christmas was something not man-made, but made of twigs.
It happened so fast that on the bud ends and angles of each twig,
where beads had formed, the droplets froze without time
to fall, and hung now, like prisms, with branches all a-sheen in
glossy tinsel, which when the wind blew lightly, clinked like a woods of glass
one could label fragile. And carefully, if you pried, a laurel leaf would yield its skin of ice
to you, its ovate curve intact; with midrib, point and veins – all stamped and etched in a frozen
relief slowly melting in your hands. This sudden frost
will pass, as city-petals paint sidewalks pink a day or two till they turn brown as twigs,
but now the image stays with you for hours, even the trail grass fringed with ice,
up over Round and up over Frissell, the soft peaks more like swells, softened over endless time,
as hull-like cloud-shadows drift across the upper valley, your view unobstructed by all the leafy chaos
of lush green summer, when the laurel blooms as briefly as it does now, shining
in the moon. But it is time to descend; time to go home to the inevitable disasters the world has shown
us. Nature’s fury, Man’s malevolence, Grim disease, Old Age frozen
and forever cold. Speechless, stunned and glassy-
eyed; alone, we watch as maybe cancer turns us into twigs,
but I count ourselves as ‘lucky’ to have been there just on time
to take it in, to make it part of us, before our brittle limbs are fragile as the ice
itself. This landscape is imagined. I offer it to you to break the ice
between us. Listen with your eyes closed and you will be filled with light.
The rain will suddenly end. Our hands will move in unison like clouds, a timeless
moment, like tai-chi students in the park you watch on your way to work, frozen
in their postures, warding off the evil that surrounds us, with bamboo sticks
the teacher gave them as their swords. Enough to conquer chaos…?
you might ask. Those soft round hills, like lenses, like glass
they framed my thoughts; polished to an icy
chill, they were the kindling
made my vision shine,
but in the end, the next day, at the baseball game, too cold
to swing the bat, it was the chance to share that moment
gave me glee. So, there. You take the stick. Your eyes the window.
Any moment serves. The final out, the catch, snow-coned in a desperate slide;
his performance, just another moment that outshines this frozen world.