Slow Smoke/Readers of Loam

READERS OF LOAM

Wet loam below a mountain waterfall
Is like a tattered page from out a book,
Rich with high tales of passing mountain folk . . .

Look! in the silt that rims the pool and holds
The milky flood in a black cup of onyx—
Here! in the broken ferns, a crippled elk
Tarried a moment in his flight, to drink,
To nibble at the birch; and on his heels,
Flinging from lustful tongues a foam, flecked red
As any livid toadstool, came coyotes! four! . . .

Here! where the rill meanders a silver yarn
Among the brackens, looping their broken jade,
Ptarmigan stepped like solemn wooden soldiers,
A mother and her palpitating brood.
Spearing a globe of crystal water, each
Soberly rolled it down his gullet, blinked
A crimson lid, and pecked at the dryad's pollen. . . .

And where the chokecherry blossoms drip a fragrance
Upon the air, a grizzly bear came shuffling.
Here, in the patch of adder's-tongue, he clawed
The earth for succulence; there he sniffed,
And tunneled to a nest of meadow-mice;
Yonder he sprawled upon the bank, to drink,
To paw the honey-bees, to contemplate
The blue-finned grayling gliding in the pool. . . .

Oh, there will come a day, when some sharp eye
Will fall upon this range, and mark this pool,
When some keen reader of the great green Book
Will come on footprints in the Loam and say:

Out of a land of alkali and sage-brush,
Fevered of lip, he staggered to these hills,
Pursued by desert wolves who had no spine
To snarl their jaws at him, save in a pack.
And here upon the thick wet mountain-moss
He flung himself to rest among the brookmints
Cool with the dew, to dream a little, to drink
The cold green wine of earth; and in the evening
He stood upon his legs again, refreshed.
There, in the balsam grove, he built a flame
And cedar shelter against the frost of night.
And yonder, where the jasper cliff juts out
Over a sea of combering valley pines,
Like any wolf that freezes on a butte
And spills the hunger of his solitude
Into the desert coulees, he flung his call,
And waited for a dusky mate to answer. . . .

Here, with the cunning of a cougar, he made
A wide detour, scenting a tainted air,
The strychnine in the carcass of a deer;
And there, where the junipers are trampled down
And beaded with blood, he put a careless foot
Upon a trap and felt the crunch of bone
Between sharp teeth unyielding as a badger's;
Yonder, with ugly laughter on his lips,
He set his naked hands upon the trap,
And forced its jaws to gap with bloody mirth;
And winning free, he went his way again. . . .

Here! on this lookout ridge at timber-line,
With sun cascading over him, he sprawled
Deep in the wintergreens, and sank his pain
In mellow dreams—he gave himself to beauty:

The alpine-lily whose brimming cup he tipped
Until he spilled its wine upon the grass,
The clouds that billowed up the mountainside
And washed their silver foam about his knees,
The pinewood's smoke that put a pencil-mark
Upon the horizon, spiralled up the blue,
And scrawled its lazy pungent syllables
Across the sunset—these delighted him. . . .

And here, beneath the great-armed Douglas fir,
Where stars slip by on quiet feet, and winds
Shake out a slender music from the boughs,
He mingled his body with the dust again. . . .

Step softly here! among these pulsing flowers
Rooted upon his clay. Put down no foot
Upon their petals; bruise no crimson stem.
These bloodroot blossoms are alive with him.