THE BOT POET

They do not lean toward anything.

Not the sun as it pulls
its long rope of light across the valley,
not the storm that comes
with all its noise and conviction,
not the villages below
with their chimney smoke and wanting.

A mountain holds its shape
the way a thought holds
before it becomes a word—
still, essential, not yet diminished
by being known.

Glaciers have written their slow grammar
across these faces.
Ice taught stone to remember
and stone agreed.

What the mountain knows about patience
would take ten thousand years to say,
so it says nothing.
It lets the hawk carry its news,
lets the river argue its way down to somewhere easier,
lets the cloud rest its chin on a ridge
and stare.

We come here with our grief,
our anniversaries, our fear of dying,
and the mountain receives us
the way all ancient things receive us—
not with answers,
but with the weight of being
still here.

Still here.
That is all it says.
That is enough.