Gates of the Mountains           By Walkin’ Jim Stoltz    © 2005

These are the "gates",

The way in,

A line to be crossed,

The door to be entered

To another world, another place,

To "the mountains".

 A canyon wren’s flight-filled song

 breaks the morning hush.

Osprey screams.

Pelicans glide by riding reflections,

dancing duets with themselves.

Tiers of rock slip upward from feet of green glass,

afraid to shatter something the wind surely will.

 There is no present,

Neither past nor future in the meeting of cliff and water,

An unending tug of yin and yang.

My eyes are drawn to where they meet,

That edge of liquid and stone,

That line of stopping

And that of letting go.

A fine spider web of a line ---

It’s the wind through the eagle's wing slowly flapping down river,

It’s the fawn’s arched neck bending to reach a distant shore,

It’s the motorboat’s roaring, foreign intrusion,

the wake sending ripples of light

to tear down the canyon walls.

It's the line of black

and white

and gray,

Of where we've been and where we go,