clearing the clutter

clarity

hard work can shake away life’s extraneous clutter
as if to remove any blinders that lead us away
from what is most vital,

I hike hard up a mountain
and I become conscious of myself as body:
eye and feet to find the step,
leg, heart, and lung to move me up the trail,


and I become conscious of myself as spirit
as fern, fungus, and flower are there for me,


as well as vistas,
so that while I am most within me
I can be most outside of me,

today, even the air is clearer,
the sun sharper as light is not blurred
as it shafts through the forest,

a haze of clouds swallows us at sunset
as if to remind us that weather can be more of grey
than the black-and-white of distinction,

 

in the hours before sunrise, the clouds go away
and the stars are diamond white points
who prick the emptiness we call black,
even the Milky War visible to remind us of our neighborhood,
shooting stars flare in quick bursts of life
as that beyond us touches us,

dawn takes its time to bring color back into the world,

the eastern horizon like an art teacher,
showing us different palettes of blue,
a ridgeline becomes individual trees,
shades of red, rose clouds all around the sky,
and Orion dissolves, though Venus and Jupiter last awhile in the sky,

the Sun pulls herself up over Mt. Guyot
and a new dawn awakens the world,


this trip up, on, and over the mountain always wakes me up,

and I strive to remember the clarity I feel
when the clutter shakes away,
and I can be back and real.

by Henry Walker
July 29, ’12