Nurture your Nature

Noodle Express and Guardians

Lavinia suggested we go out for lunch. She ate her chicken singapore (garlicky) while I indulged in shrimp osaka (mustard-ginger). We spoke about how we are both struggling with unresolved mental/emotional/physical issues. Outside snow pebbles (grapple) were falling and thin white veils were descending from the clouds and moving across the valley. So I wove this poem out of those images;

At the Noodle Express

White pebbles falling.
A curtain pulled across the valley.
Grey clouds approaching snow clad peaks.
A peek of white where sun breaks through...

...and you,
eating rice and chicken with a spoon...
...and me,
working sticks to grab plump rice and shrimp.

We discuss our middle age malaise,
our failure to staunch the growing sense:
it’s now or never.

Pebbles melt to puddles
as mountain veils dance minuets.
So much like us:
it’s now you see them, now you don’t.

© Kåre Enga 2010-03-22 [167.5]

On the 24th I strolled down Hellgate Canyon noting the melting ice, finding a couple buttercups in bloom. The ice-castles of the mini-waterfall are dirty, sad, no longer sparkling. The river's low, but one sees the greening up on Mt. Jumbo, the moss bright green on the rockface of Mt. Sentinel. I even saw a striped squirrel (or chipmunk) on the rock scree. Mergansers were resting on a log.

One notes the pines high up on the ridge as Hellgate Canyon is a deep gash between the Sapphire Mountains that defend it. I wrote this poem and include a picture taken in silhouette from earlier this month that only hints at how the pines appear as guardians. Until a better picture...

Guardians

See the Guardian trees of the ridge,
their Commander at the pointy edge,
What lies below their silent silhouette
cries in shadow or hides in crevices of ice.
Green moss, grey lichens creep and colonize this sullen rock
as chipmunks clamber over scree
where mountain face has fallen, sloughed.
Above soft whispers of a west wind bringing warmth
the roots of the Guardians hang on to rock; they've seen it all.
The talons of the Commander on the pointed edge defy it all.

© Kåre Enga 2010-03-24 [167.7]



Missoula, Montana, March 22 and 24, 2010

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