Top of the World
I traveled to the top of the world,
Where eternity unfurled.
Yet time stood still, and always will,
Up at the top of the world.
The wind made the only song,
Cold as it whisked along.
Glaciers bold guarded tales untold,
Far from the hurrying throng.
Nothing moves at the top of the
world,
Where the granite is pink and purled.
I felt God there, in the flawless air,
Up at the top of the world.
Bear Tooth Pass. Have you been there?
It rainbows over the top of the world.
Conceived in timber-acres of it, miles of it,
Timber deep green and flecked with aspens' gold and sumac's red-
The silent road wends up toward forgotten, forbidden, silent
castles of stone.
Bear Tooth Pass. Magnificence floods the name yet does this place
no justice.
Glacial lakes, silent, still, nourish the roots of stunted pine
and fir.
Spruce that any place else would be king here is humbled to earth.
Knuckles and fists of stone lie heaped, silently guarding their
secrets.
Granite as old as the world.
The summit-God lives here.
You can feel him in every sigh of the wind, in the flinty soil
that scars your feet.
You can see him in the magnificence of the sky,
Where the world begins, and where it ends.
I sit in stunned silence, here at the top of the world, at the
edge of the world.
Below me lie glaciers, trapped in the side of mountains that
plummet out from under me.
Glaciers dirtied by days and weeks, months…maybe years of
summers.
Or was it only an hour?
Below sprawl glacial lakes, and the contemplation of their cold
alone makes me ache.
Lakes as old as the world, as deep as history.
In the sun they sparkle royal blue, emerald green,
Like a mallard's head, glinting against the sun.
I stare at the vastness. The unending monumentality of this space
in the world-
This space out of the world. The mind cannot take it in.
To grasp it is a conquest reserved for Gods.
Silence. Silence so all-encompassing it hurts…yet so complete
it heals.
And then the wind, the moaning, rushing wind,
The voices of all the angels of eternity together…singing.
Up here, only the grass holds turf in place. The trees, the bravest
and highest of them,
Lie far below, stunted, ragged, twisted and bent by the wind.
Even they can't survive up here, where only a week, a day,
Maybe only an hour away, the snow will come, and the earth here
will be a cloud.
The mountains that ring this bowl are crafted of granite, of
limestone, of rhyolite.
The word "mountains" does them no justice.
They are statues, monuments, chateaux in stone.
These words and yet no words describe these monoliths,
All gathered and bound together by cements only God could muster.
Mounds of rock gather all around me,
Salt-and-pepper and rosy granite with bits of mica
Like diamond flakes a-glint in the sun.
Angular silver stones,
Poised on the brink of eternity beneath a sky of some blue they
haven't invented a name for.
Royal blue, azure blue, turquoise, cornflower, sapphire:
Perhaps the sum of them all would equal this sky.
God made this summit piece by piece. He carved each rock with
care.
He excavated each lake and mixed the blues and greens himself,
Finishing them off with a sprinkle of diamond dust.
He set each blade of grass in its realm,
Carved each troubled tree in the valley below with the wind and
rain as his only tools.
I am thankful I'm a poet. Thankful I can put a pen to paper and
release what builds inside me.
I fear if I couldn't that these emotions would build a dam across
my soul forever.
Tears fill my eyes as I gaze over this spectacle. Gooseflesh
takes over my skin.
Nothing could be so devoid of life as this place. And yet nothing
could be so full of life.
Spirits move here, the spirits of all the ages.
Those who come here come already knowing they are someplace special.
Yet they have only an inkling.
There comes a time when all of them must walk somewhere to be
alone.
Something about this place cannot be shared.
Man leaves his wife, woman leaves her husband.
In stunned reverence they make their way to the brink,
The only sound the crunching of gravel beneath their feet.
I see a golden eagle, his wings unfurled, tilting expertly to
move him this way and that.
He sees everything. Perhaps he is the eyes of God.
I see a butterfly, lost, wandered out of its element into space,
Into peace, into Heaven.
What are the noises here?
A stone, nudged out of a place it has held since its creation,
Tips over the edge and rattles on rocks as it descends until
for several seconds there is silence,
Then a cold distant echo off the fractured cliff faces as it
strikes bottom. Life and death.
A raven glides by, and he tries to voice his noble caw.
It comes out as a gargled clucking, like a tongue flicked across
the teeth.
The raven, too, for once is speechless.
There is the crunch of gravel beneath feet,
One's own sighs,
One's heartbeats,
A voice carrying across from the other side of the canyon.
And the wind. There are no other noises. This place is made for
peace.
Somewhere, perhaps, is a man who can grasp the significance of
Bear Tooth.
That man is perfect. Only perfection can grasp perfection.
Nothing can touch this place. Artist's brush. Poet's pen. Author's
mind. Nothing.
Nothing lives here. Everything lives here. God lives here.
One raven finds his voice, and in the distance he raises a call
of awe.
-Kirby Jonas, September 26, 2001 |
