Force Majeure

socks, boots, fleece slacks, moisture-wicking pullover over my neck boots off, hydrogen down sleeping bag sleeve over my face
socks on, over my slacks, on Velcro-ed
pine needles and pins of
sharp dirt

sweat
caked, salt
flaked off with a
rubbing finger like the icing of a cake but salty.
Finger, if not busy
(_____)ing,
cold numb-automating until the lactated muscles of the ever-laboring limbs said (never-)sleep
and so despite I fell asleep.

Thirty-hundred-meter
drop, twenty-hour
hike, a dinner
of salted pork cabbages atop mélange of rice and pan crusts cooked in tin wash basins over camp stove after,
I fell asleep, and awoke
suddenly to the sounds of human speech, of zippers and tent poles, of porridge cooking over camp stove.
Awoke,
to the profound darkness that is predawn.

Dissembling, then contract-ing
the mangled and crumbly spread of human presence into parts, colorful rocks
we carried on our backs, strapped to our feet and

on we – still dark – march into the silent anacrusis of daybreak. The deep – the mirror of a mirror above –
illuminated within, a supple skin turned slate purple
its pores – flores nocturnus – close and open onto the matte-ness and blackness of us and the earth beneath,
                     a phantom glow
                     a negative
                     a knowledge concealed
until – arrested in the nakedness of a hill’s shoulder we raised our heads – it (blue-blooded and ballantine) reveals itself
despite
its dispassionate
its inevitable
due.      A Reflection to a Void a moment yielding to the other
and the other moment and the
plasticity of Subject to Space that waits to _____

                                                  We are his subjects.
                                                  We are the First Humans.
with thousand sprigs of dew-lit fingers our God
                          -- in one yoke-drop –
vaults over
and above
ridges and vales at night we thought were
terrible, terrifying sphinxes.
The space becomes Him,
he who fills the space with his unintended
love that is blue, purple, acid-rose, areate.                      And
clouds – slabs quilted overhead,
             torrents overflowing under –
awoke,
took off
suddenly, in
bulk, in
herd, in
wrath of clairvoyant
beauty.                                          a moment quickens the
other and the other then the other quickens the
avarice of its baroque fury and the other of the
other moment quickens...

And suddenly the day arrives.
The world,
born, long
there.

                     we are but specks of

an onerous, turpentine existence and

suddenly we
are forgetful of the magnificent
complexity we call
Humanity.                                                              Because
To see the future – we have seen the future –
we have to endure
the day
as is.
-- quiet. paralyzed. absent --
                     In the vale, a hawk.