The Mystery
The stream runs on forever,
never the same stream.
November. Autumn has come late
to the canyons of the Mogollons.
On the South Fork of Whitewater Creek,
a light wind blows down canyon, sunlight
pours through wind-rattled leaves, creating
enigmatic, many-colored
maps of autumn’s turnings, sweep
of gold laid down by walnut, ash
and aspen, scrub oaks ranging orange,
maples deepening their shades
of red. I sit beside the stream,
reading Han Yu, the wise
poet “treading pebbles barefoot
in swift-running water.” I watch
a dipper upstream dive the pools
for insect larvae. Overhead
a raven groks, rejoicing or
complaining who can say? A red-
breasted nuthatch calls from deep
among the trees. My dog has treed
a squirrel – twitching its exquisite
tail, it protests bitterly.
Kenneth Rexroth once asked what
he’d gained in years of coming to
the mountains, listening “to falling
water’s swift conjunctions.” Taoist
sages raised their huts among
the mountains, seeing there a clear
embodiment of all the Ten Thousand
Things, each worked upon and shaped
by ten thousand changes, intricate
beyond our human comprehension.
What, beyond the solitude
and beauty, keeps me coming now
for sixty years to pass my days
traversing peaks and ridges, reading
poetry in autumn light?
Am I in any way a better
man? Have mountains made me wiser?
Kinder? Here among the wilds
I find the mysteries of why
and when and how surrounding me.
I have come to love the mystery.
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