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Imagine Mountains
For the Sesquicentennial of Robert Frost’s birth
(March 26, 1874 – March 26, 2024)
“Let chaos storm!
Let cloud shapes swarm!
I wait for form.” —Robert Frost, “Pertinax”
Imagine a mountain’s patient peaks
revert to wave-rinsed shoals of sand,
that limestone’s undulating streaks
or slate stairs crumbling on cliffsides
deposit damply in your hand
a drifting crinoid’s feathered strand
still smelling of Silurian tides.
Then, like a plate, the seashore cracks.
You vanish, and your sandy tracks
subsume in metamorphic birth
as an irrupting spine of earth
rumples bright sea, tarp-taut terrain,
like bargain carpets tossed in drifts;
tectonic shields collide and strain
like thudding wrestlers; throated rifts
widen; red magma rivers slide
in dragon-coils; cake-layered bedrock
uprears, then the tsunami tide
halts mid-air to abruptly lock
in crustal, chill, mesmeric glaze
a lofty mountain’s quiet gaze.
Five fingers then mold stone like clay:
one finger is the knifing stream
that rinses bone-gray silts away,
filtering to a pebbled gleam
through leaf-weirs fine as tangled hair;
another, summer storms that tear
rock-clinging trees with banshee yowl,
upturning roots with crash of wood,
a gaping crater where they stood;
or winter’s milky fog that soaks
the cliff’s brow like a soggy towel,
freezing by starlight to ice-wedge
loose boulders off a giddy ledge
that bounce downslope like hammer strokes;
or tendril threads that stitch and wind
a garment woven underground
along, between, against, around
whatever cracks or clefts they find,
grubbing like moles through earthen belts;
or when in March a snowbank melts—
first steam, then trickles, then a flood.
Avalanche-quick, whole hillsides go
in batter-thick, congealing mud
while buried streams, stalactite-slow,
trace hidden caves—then sinkholes slump
where rain stews in a boiler sump
black kettles of nutritious ink
that hickory, white oak, poplar drink,
a heady bubbling leafy brew
that cures the vapors—rousing, you
observe green pastureland where soon
farmhouses rise and cattle graze,
traversing lives of little change
from daybreak sun to midnight moon
under a mountain’s quiet gaze.
Imagine a patient mountain range.
Beclouded by a churning might
that shapes our coarsened breadth and height
avalanche-quick, stalactite-slow,
eyes search too vaguely to perceive
the truths we feel but cannot know.
Mountains teach us to believe.
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Crinoids: passive suspension feeders who filter plankton from sea water through feathery arms and are documented in the fossil record as early as 480 million years ago.
The Silurian Era (443.7 to 416 million years ago): a period during which Earth underwent widespread geologic changes that had considerable impact on the environment and life.
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Carey Jobe is a retired attorney. In addition to the Society of Classical Poets, his poems have recently appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken, and The Chained Muse. He lives and writes near Tallahassee, Florida.
I thought the last stanza was especially strong.
avalanche-quick, stalactite-slow,
And
Mountains teach us to believe.
Were my favorite lines.
Well done!
Thanks, Michael!
This an imaginative array of description and narrative, taking the reader through a kaleidoscopic range of geological changes and transformations and shifts. It captures a real sense of the vast age of the earth, and the countless millions of years that have both shaped and then destroyed whole mountain ranges, and then brought them back in intricate new ways and patterns.
The rhythmic movement of the verse suggests a ritual drumbeat, almost as if a shaman were speaking in one long drone of soothsaying. And yet this is a normal tetrameter meter, with just few bumps here and there.
The narrative voice of the poem is one of invitation — asking the reader to picture, fantasize, and imagine. The length of the poem makes it very much like a catalogue-piece, which provides the reader with a complex list of things to ponder.
It is very good work, and highly sophisticated.
Joe, I always appreciate your insightful remarks. The iambic tetrameter and stanzaless rhyme scheme are loosely drawn from “A Missive Missile,” a lesser known but great Frost poem. Frost’s whole life was an effort to derive form and meaning from the chaos of experience. Hence the mountain metaphor.
Thanks for commenting!
In this poem you have guided me through millions of years, all the while capturing geologic motion with your perfect verbs.
Thanks, Mary!
There is so much articulated and detailed information in this poem requiring concentration that rewards us with a beautiful symphony for the senses. Dr. Salemi said it well in his comments, “highly sophisticated.”
Thanks, Roy! Glad you liked it.
Beautiful words, alive and begging
to be heard. Thank you.
Thanks, jd!
Loved the imagery – the hammer strokes, the thudding wrestlers.
I’m reminded by your poem of the Rod Taylor version of ‘The Time Machine’, where the geology changes around him as he travels back and forth in time
A pleasure to read, Carey.
I’m really glad you liked it, Paul. Thanks for commenting!
Carey after reading your poem, my year of Geology was remembered. Good job with your theme! Patricia J
Thanks for commenting, PJ!
The tropes and imagses tumble down the sturdy ladder of fluid rhyme like a rockslide. The “frosty” heave of geological time and evolution are conveyed powerfully, almost viscerally. I could easily imagine that the mountain was part of the cliff above Dover Beach. R.F. should be pleased.
I’m grateful for your kind remarks, C.B., especially that R.F. would be pleased. I hope so!
“Imagine Mountains” presented this reader with an avalanche of stunning imagery that has overwhelmed my senses and left me breathless… I’m going back for another read… only this time… I’ll take it slowly… and savor every linguistic delight. Thank you, Carey, for this head-turning poetic nod to Robert Frost.
Susan, I’m delighted you liked the poem. Like you (and like Frost), I try to fill each line with intriguing ideas expressed with the best possible words. The English language is filled with riches, as shown in the many fine poems you’ve penned. Thanks for your encouraging comments!
I’m thrilled to see you commemorate this important anniversary, especially with such a well-crafted and ambitious work. What I like best about it is how it stands on its own — the association with Frost is entirely implied, except for the subtitle. The language is lushly descriptive and filled with action (unexpectedly, given you are describing fossils and mountains). And at the end you show us how the poem commemorates Frost. I read there an allusion to his principle that “a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
Thank you.
Adam, I’m grateful for your insightful observations about my poem. Especially so, as you are a discerning Frost scholar as shown by recent articles you wrote about his poetry and life. Many thanks!
“eyes search too vaguely to perceive
the truths we feel but cannot know.
Mountains teach us to believe.”
Great finisher.
Bravo!
Your comment means a lot. Thanks, David!