BECOMING 4-LEGGED

HARVESTING WATER,

BECOMING ONE OF THE 4-LEGGEDS

These trails have always been trails.

I try and talk

something else comes out

where I've never been

and where I don't know

where it is. Here is here.

Every time.

That's where we went.

So much fast water

falling over itself tumbling

off rocks bigger than men

ever tried to look at, take in.

All that speed over what won't move

over an aging body.

Why is the spoken sound better

than the written word?

Water washing water harvest sound

what we had with spilling light

coming out all sides like fire.

Maybe that's what is was, fire--

and fire-light flaring--

                                    Stormed.

            Water-stormed.

After a morning going up,

            ascending.

picking a tread way up over stone,

going down. Before trekking poles

this was hard work. Man work.

Water-stormed in wonder space.

Trekking poles, now, there's something

beyond water worth considering.

A man talking to a man

harvesting water.

Going mountain down after five/six hours

of climbing, mind already free

of what it knows and what it thought it knew.

It's changed, altered, endorphins, new-mind,

synapses, dopamine, everything spent

and mind falls out of itself, no-mind.

And the poles--poles adjusting the body.

                       

                                    Shortened,

and man body bent low, trekking

poles turn one as close

as one can become,

into one of the four-leggeds.

                       

Man-drawn body,

body tight. Drawn in and four-legged

The man-elbows

act as knees--act--that's what they are--

knees. Front legs shorter

than man-legs trailing Muscle-work,

not touch and fly work Those knees

walking/jumping around rock and root,

fast--animal reflex fast. Those trekking poles

even look like antelope legs--

not as fast or quick, but the mountain rhythm

dance-hop reaches towards that kind of grace

in the descent-dance.
                         Keep it until you're changed.

It travels time-corners, connecting to other,

earlier times, trace element beyond time

splashes of awareness, pre-cognitive, connect time.

Precognitive. Animal dream

worth striving for--dreaming about--

those short front legs,--

those elbows turned goat-knee

surefooted off rock, goat-knees

            jumping rock

hoof-turned into plastic basket.

Just what is that, walking sidewalk in the city?

Jim Bodeen

25 August 2017--1 September 2017