Chronicling Consciousness From the Bottom of Green Mountain

I sit on a white bench wondering

could I see this mountain if the grass didn’t move? without motion, I am blind, (I ask why of movement and receive stillness in reply, perceive that my voice    holds no echo)

and my glass eyes fill the holes in my mind like bookends—except they’re not, because that would mean that the thing    between    held meaning,

millions of inestimable words pressed into a cultured jacket, the secrets of the wind bound for persual at the drop of a top hat.

Not ends, then—openings—plateaus swallowing the stars and that umbrellaed blue (I ask who of the unfettered sky, who painted you to have such spirit, of a kind that lives enmeshed with me?)

that umbrellaed blue spiced with starlight, stirred by sunlight, seen and understood and wide to the discernment that I am out there, that my pages spread past sight and motion;

and though I stare at my inside-self    chained to static blindness    I think I could see that mountain

even if the meadowlark abandoned her post and the mountain lion fled, even if the wind ceased to nudge the sward to dance with the evening primrose, even if the lightning’s voice couldn't rattle the dust atop the grassroots and the humor of the downpour caved amongst the agelast scrubs.

But what of the restless eyes that yearn to see and understand, to meet the gaze of starlit gems, witness those visions of sunlight,

still their reckless energy and stare    stare    at the mountain finally promising the dearth a catalyst for its shadow?

(I ask how of the hollowness, how do I reconnect

with what awaits me at the bottom of the apple-picking tree, to hear the sough of the orchard, and the reflection of human voices to catch a whisper by its name, lift a mutter up from its feet and send it waltzing?)

Without motion, I am blind. But what of the movement that pulses in the unseen, the unfelt, the unworried? What of the voice that carries on a conversation, echoes in the hollow questions, gathers in loneliness’ resound?

At the end of it all, when color becomes a mind’s dream and stillness is a lie, could I decide to recline on this bench and throw myself onto that mountain?