the world, animated by spirit

the bison still there

we have a mountain bulwark up the creek from us,

over a mile of east-west upthrust,

who rises over a mile from the start of its base,

which is just down the road from us,

the Cherokee called it Walisiyi

for a great frog once found here, 

whose memory lingers 

when you see the mountain from a distance,

today we hiked halfway to the summit

to a gap, graced with a stone table,

the Cherokee called this side of the mountain, Bullhead,

for the bison bull,

the great hump of the shoulders, 

the crew-cut head,

the shape not just hinting at the spirit of the animal,

but rather shouting that that animal and that that mountain are one,

we hike hard and steep from the valley below

and savor views on the drier ridges

where the Great Fire four years ago

scoured away blocking trees

and burned the lichen off the stone, white rocking it,

now countless trees, particularly table mountain pine, 

assault the sky

to have their turn 

at foresting the bull’s head,

each step up the mountain a victory of effort and care,

and I donated pounds of my sweat

in my body’s attempt to throw off the waste of my heat,

valleys and mountains scatter out from us,

as if sown by a power we cannot truly know,

that same power flowers the trail 

yellow, and orange, and blue:

coreopsis, yellow-fringed orchis, 

southern hare-bell, smooth gerardia,

we take our time to walk the gap and ridge line,

and to strain to reach toward 

how the first people saw and understood this world,

what their “Thou” was to their “I,”

I worry about how much we now 

see the world as machine, lifeless,

while today I feel for the world as animated by spirit,

the bison still alive as the mountain.

by Henry H. Walker

August 4, ‘20