Wolf's Howl Newsletter - Sept. 26, 2001
Dear friends,
This may not be the kind of newsletter you expect of me.
It's definitely something I haven't done before. I guess it will
be one for the books. In light of the September 11, this letter
is the only way I could heal my soul.
As a poet, I am first and foremost of the "cowboy"
variety. That is to say, my poetry mostly rhymes and is generally
crafted with care to be sure of meter and flow. But as you saw
with my poem "A Tear Fell,"
in times of deep emotion I leave "cowboy poetry" behind.
There is something about so-called free verse that can't be touched
with rhyme, at least not by my simplistic style and with my limited
vocabulary. Free verse is just what is says, and I make the most
of it. No rhythm, no rhyme, just the poetry of the English language.
I have been to the best place in the world, to Yellowstone
Park, two times during the month of September, once for four
days and once for five. I still haven't had enough of it, and
now that I'm home I miss it more than before. But I did some
healing there. It's funny, the first time we went a park ranger
led us on a tour of the mud pots, fumaroles, and geysers. She
made the comment that Yellowstone was a great place for healing.
And she was right.
We took three friends from New York to Yellowstone the
second time, and through knowing their situation and seeing Yellowstone
through their eyes, I was able to come to grips with the violence
that sometimes besets our world.
We took our friends up Bear Tooth Pass. I have seen this
pass only once before. I was alone, it was spitting snow, and
the sky was gray and black. The glacial lakes were a picture
of gloom, and it was a beautiful, inspiring sight. But this time
it was a sight that challenged my skills to describe. The sky
was brilliant, the trees were in full color. I guess there have
been tears left inside me for New York, because at Bear Tooth
they found their way out. It was too hard to hold them in as
I beheld the indescribable beauty of Bear Tooth.
This letter doesn't really hold much of my news. The Devil's
Trail is still not out, and we haven't yet been able to release
the print on demand version of The Season's End. Clint Walker
gave his okay to put him on the cover of the former, and the
latter, because of the problems with print on demand, is just
on hold. I can't swear The Devil's Trail will be out for Christmas,
but I can say one thing: It will not be available in large bookstores.
It is going to be solely a collector's edition of 1000 signed/numbered
books, and when those are gone, until some large publishing house
picks it up, it will be out of print. Please order early if you
would like a copy. I'll let you know as soon as it comes available.
Your friend,
Kirby Jonas
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 |
