Even the Shadows Dance
Even the Shadows Dance
Brendon Sylvester
The water’s light in the cold, bright creek,
Above the cloying mists and clouds,
The air is clearer, here, and whole.
Our shoulders burn with packs
Legs, knees, heads ache for the climbing path,
The sun, the height:
But ache, oh limbs, oh lungs, oh me—
You cannot love enough this sprawling world
And cannot swim or leap or run enough upon it.
But we who had studied the maps, and the journals,
The guides to the grizzly bears, and eagles,
The tales of the landless ones who used to sojourn there,
Accounts of the mountain-valley’s paradise drowned...
We saw the world yet being made;
The rivers and falls on the mountain’s halls and walls,
The open-air cathedrals of the King;
The deer, the bear, the moose,
And every revelling thing.
We walked the sun-set bison fields,
Leaped from the bridge and swum and splashed
And played with the mountain-king in pools and baths.
And I saw that much study is a weariness to the flesh,
That it is good to leave the visions for a while,
To walk the world’s rim
And join in the dance.
But the fields grow dull
And we have miles to go before we sleep...
Miles before the camp, and the fire,
And the moon’s wry light,
And the chuckling peace
In the cold, sharp wind.
And when the day’s romp passed,
When came the time for sleep,
We slipped from our tents
To peer at the sky
At the lakeside dusk,
And glimpsed eternity reflecting in the stars.
***
But after the stars,
After the grizzly bears, and the goats, and the mountain flowers,
And the huckleberry jams in mason jars,
After the glaciers, and the cliffs, and the sprawling mountainy hours,
And the thin, sharp air,
The slope turns down (and jars the knees)
Runs back to the parking-lots, the cars,
The cell phone-towers masked as trees,
Back to the power of the dullness of the air.
And the glory glimpsed upon the mountain-top
Is veiled and dim,
And one is tempted to ask
Whether beauty is a liar
And there is no glory.
And the harrowing task
Of running at the truth is bleared
By the slogs of sneers and jeers
Of the ones who cry out,
Who will show us any good?
Your joy is a trick of the light:
Life is no more than food,
The body only clothing.
But, though the visions flicker,
And the songs return on the wind,
Ours is the dull business of jotting them down,
Tying them to our wrists and foreheads
Reciting them at dusk and morning,
Going out and coming in,
And waking in the middle of the night.
And remembering, remembering,
Remembering what eternity was like;
(We glimpsed it on that last long hike)
And saying to the skeptical spectacled scholars
Who scoff at the thought of the gods,
Saying to those who say they are not,
You are,
For you are shadows shimmering,
Slumbering, here, in a thin, dry trance.
But I have seen the mountain from afar
And traced the Graces with the hand of chance
And whooped—for even the shadows dance.
Brendon Sylvester
Poet
Photography by Lina Verovaya