14 VIEWS OF HALF DOME
I
Crystallized, rising
this rock of my
upward orders
possess a fractured memory
a child’s déjà vu
at five or forty
skyward forms surfacing
two million years ago
waters falls weaves winds floes
an onion peeled away in layers
weathers and erodes
I know I must
sleeper, awake
Tissayac, Goddess of the Valley
carves the language of glaciers
on mountainsides
ripples on a lake of ice
the torrents of a thousand springs
unstop your tongue, love
II
The trickster eye accommodates
as distance shifts perspective
far below the clouds, the valley appears
two hands cupped together
guiding glaciers and rivers.
Out the starboard window
upper and lower Yosemite Falls.
A trickle of water stumbles down your cheek
disappears, then skids off your chin.
Portside, a bruised thumbnail--
Half Dome, the size of a kiss.
A coyote darts down the aisle of the plane.
III
black and white, a gloss of yellowing softness smudges north and south (whole
and half) domes fall out of each other’s arms splayed across your breast, a
dried pine cone drops from the leaves of the book waiting twenty four years for
your lips to part, pressed against pages rubbing together, know how to start a
fire for the cone to burst and release its seeds the temperature must be hot
enough to melt the resin to dry the glue and loosen the bindings between two
people who view the images again before joints fracture boulders and avalanches
thunder into the valley between them dust and air swirl upward in a column of
light
IV
still under construction the impulse
to free a knotted heart from thrills
a kite beats against the rising wind
drawn back to the heat of warm stone
soars on thermals toward Half Dome
above the arc an unchanging sky
turns toward the face--skips
searching for familiar curves and lines
new scars or channels carved into living
rock weathers into itself
V
eight thousand eight hundred feet above the tide missing half (more like a
quarter) quarried away by glaciers pass centuries shouldering boulders
downstream U shaped a valley you alone above ice floes, previously unclimbable
I am, no
where I am
no woman before
her sheer northwest face forms vertical fractures, beauty marks, icons, rifts,
straight and plumb, cracks sheets parallels surface flows from sheet jointing
exfoliations but she rounds the back and summits
so might
have thought Miss Sarah L.
(Sally) Dutcher--
determined, self assured, forty eight hundred feet above the valley floor, with
the courage of a heroine, takes a stand upon the exalted crown, widely admired
by men, if not by women, her exceedingly steep curves and long skirts
notwithstanding
VI
from a promontory above Yosemite Falls
he stares across the valley
in his hand time contracts into the innumerable
pondering every second
patient in Latin means suffering
his watch measures
the rupture of light into shadow
the promenade of clouds across the sky
waiting
for when light breaks over Half Dome
he composes himself hooded frames the plate
upon which vision precipitates
VII
Weather rises. The sum of wind and snow is winter. South is half and not north.
North is not facing north but south. Bears claws back bread which rises better
in winter. Winds waters weather. Rain streaks stain slate and carve a face. A
hole and a half. Not the dome of the rock, but the dome of a half and not a
whole. Scarps fractures apples and almonds for lunch. A half is greater than
the whole. Mirrors breaks lakes. Silt and soils. At the top a few acres top
treetops. Face the face, a stony half is the sum of the face. Rocks brackets
cracks. A whole back is about a face. Over rocks flows bends over and bears. A
half note is a whole note undone under the dome. Snows falls waters. The sky
halves fractures. A half is greater than the sum of the whole weathering.
