Master Stroke

By Roy Doughty
Written 6/4/07

On the southeast side of the peak, there drifts
A puff of fog. Its ephemeral lavender
Makes an arresting contrast to the starker
Dark greens of the pine and fir, the mountain’s point
Of hardness rising into space, shredding the sea-born
Atmospheres. Someone in the neighborhood
Is hammering against metal, building, perhaps,
Another railroad to heaven. This may be
An entity trapped in the anachronism
Of thought, who occupies a mind, which is,
As usual, trying to find a way out of its shanty-town
Of self-afflictions. The lavender cloud
Turns gray, as a little Naples yellow
Anneals its unraveling edges, the mountain, too,
Along with its trees, changing color in response
To the call of emptiness.

Inside both cloud
And mountain, moving regally through a dawn,
Which is, as usual, the dawn of time, we become
Aware of a personage without the anachronism
Of mind, a personage who has no need of rails
Or travel, being already situated in all the paradise
That there is. This being, ephemeral as air, enduring
As stone, looks down upon a personage looking up
At it. There is an apperception of kinship,
The father, the mother, knows well its wayward child,
And the giant, void of thought, takes up its hammer,
And without compassion delivers a saving blow.

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