TOR

Are we all just primitive beings whose towers have been destroyed? Gerard de Nerval

If you asked a Spaniard I believe they would call you torero
the bullfighter on foot -
An ancient Celt might have you, Jonah-like, residing in the belly of the world -
On the other side of the planet the superbly silent Shinto Masters have him as the perched bird torii
And, in the old Germanic tongues, I have even heard him called the fool - the one who walks the hills -

Nevertheless, it is none of these
Not now
not here
Acropetal
rising to the top
with a restless unthinking
Numb - inert - still
the very view going on forever
From the crag of all creation -

Tor



The Diamond Treasury


In the east I have scaled the mountain they call Huang Shan
where Taoist hermits sought the immortal -
I have ascended the teeth of the diamond mountains of North Korea, the land of 12000 miracles. 12000 pinnacles.
At Mount Kailas I have entered the pagoda palace of Demchog, the One of Supreme Bliss -
and beneath Tongariro with blinded Maori warriors I have averted my eyes from the fiery goddess that inhabits its peaks.

In the west, I have been painted by the Zuni of North America and sent into the mountains to be born -
In a temple far finer than those made by human hands, I have listened to the stone sermons of the Sierra Nevadas, and
On the sacred mount of the Navajo I have been fastened to the earth with a single solitary sunbeam.

In southern Anatolia I have walked the ledges of Olimpos and breathed fire with Bellepheron -
In the Kingdom of Morocco, supervised by Titans, I have mapped a new world midst the Atlas -
Of the Alpine Engaden, I have gone mad with the lightning sharp clarity of snow-capped peaks -
And of the Scottish High Lands I have vanished from all trace and become nothing -

Midst the mountains of this world and the next, I have been to the place they call nowhere. 




Ascent of Ben Lomond, April 4th 2006


Blind Spot

seeing something from another perspective
might involve

not seeing it at all
the parallax of absence
countering its presence

seeing it
from such a spot
that it ceases to become visible
and where the seeing

of the not there
is another angle

an angle neither obtuse
nor acute

the angle of zero degrees


Contrail

I can only imagine what
it must be like to be a
contrail
little crystal water droplets
sealed in the blue air
shimmering, slowly shape shifting
finally fading into nothing
the signature of the sky slowly
becoming nameless


Tachyon

Tender little particle
Rhythm of being
Though we know it not

This capacity



Tozal

this is the Zenith the way
of the white clouds
the path
of the mindless mind

up here
on top
of it all

on the tozal

total



The Mind Aligned

Here.
Now.
Pushing ahead
flowing locomotive
the mind flowers
attaining stillness
and finds
in momentum
the moment.



The Southern City Trimontium

A triumph of hills

these emperors of green

Melowther

Dunwan

Ballageich