Devil's Slide, Milk Creek

 

Stone's Source, Part #I  /43

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the color we see when we change colors,

 the shapes we create, in plastic or metal,

 the sounds we create when we welcome noise,

 the people we become when we try,

 the Earth as it is becoming,

 the stars which do not live in the heavens,

 the concerns of glory, or avarice or profit,

 

 the chance not taken or

     taken for the wrong reasons

     which beg results which can transcend

     heaven.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the time it takes to complete

     what does not further

     or speaks with authority

     to add confusion

 the way the body is broken in war

     or the mind in the confines of derision.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the parts of existence which bind

     without principal, or without the

     least of which is glory

     as if in the next world there

     will be reward.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the age of reason when confusion reigned

 or the age of metal when blood flowed

 or the age of information when it had so

    little value as if to become its opposite.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 a past I have never known but without which

 there is no return and no future,

 a part of each day which lingers though union

   and into the depths of itself, forgotten, or

 the profusion of the unknown when what is known

     is so clearly held for the asking and the

     silence is to each, their own.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 those things which, though I can not see,

 do not live within me but rather haunt

 the epochs of change, through all of us.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the bends and twists of the self, in spite of

     me, in spite of the topography of need

     because of the shapes of greed,

     because,

     of the shapes of greed.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 that one slowly turning self, as if in effigy

 as it pivots with the wind, for the

 unbalanced forces from which this neck,

 inside its shattered mantle, dangles.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the quickest or the closest, or the

 most separate for to know, as each

 it stands between and does not connect

 even in the closest valley.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the one, that which needs no introduction

 and does not apologize for the cover of

 flight. It is all that much, too much, from

 which it came, if coming is a word which

 instills for fear.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 any of the burdened ones which fled

 when all of the valleys and ridges

 were hostile, not because they are not

      glorious, but because they do not

      need the heat of these words, or the

      double-edged sword of existing.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the one which without glory does not exist,

 or the one which without glory does

    not age,

 or the one which without glory does not

    profit,

 or the one which without glory does not

    know the end for what it is

         or value those moments

         or reverie in them

         or seek to keep them knowing

         there is no keeping.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 these words, as they pass by,

 migrating as they do to warmer climates

 and returning with the gusts of sunshine

 to nest in the slough, along the wet meadows

 and in the corner of high lakes with no names

 and no glory.

 

I do not choose to glorify

 the one which came back, out of disgust for

 process, or modeled itself from dust, or

 founded equations which contradicted themselves

 over the land so that others could doubt.

      To those, the borrowers of time without

      paying it back, the ones who lost time

      and the ones who did not know it was there

      to loose, I stand united, not out of glory

      but out of kinship, unknown.

 

I do not choose to glorify this moment

 or the other ones, though they play back

 in union with me as I travel

    on by the dreams of longing,

    and longitude,

    and loam.

 

            I do not choose to glorify the eyes

 or the ears, or any of the senses

 which lead us into and away from the world

 as it is known, as it is unknown, ourselves,

 the gentle rolling hills behind your house,

 the colors which change,

 the shapes of metal and sandstone,

 the Music of music,

 the unglorified,

 

 the Earth as we know it

     and the Earth as we do not

     know it, ourselves as we know or are

     known from the unknown, inside or out

     all that is not glorified by blood

     or muscle, by stream or peak

     and joined by time which glory

     will not change, and will not be

     chosen by any of us for glory.

 

 

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