Alpine Fever: Poetry on a Far-Away Place

A time passed
A summer spent away
Above the city.
Wind let rush
By sheer faces of stone
Grass blown by breezes
Earth warmed by sun; harmony.
Again, I recall a landscape of richness
And potential darkness
Which now, I suppose, were surrendered to me.
A dreamer in hour of night,
A walker in hour of day.
Again, I recall these feelings of sentiment to which
nature was not so far; the sun set late
a comforting glow of grand distance.
I recall these people in a place so
Disconnected from norm; ego too
Consumed by nature itself.
I recall solace by ambiguity
and the almost misty existence of landscape itself.

An absence from which I learn
How to live with nature, in a place which nature is not present,
Where the wind does not blow the same.
Summit a world away, lake increscent
To top; immense height of lofty terrain:
The elevation of mind, elevation above judgements
Above those apparitions of being.
Remembrance in mind; recollection of heart
Beating fast on the edge of
Empty, space for everyone.
Eyes closed to bring back sense of Joyous Rebellion:
Felt in the teeth; a slight stipulation
That passing of time terminates,
Grandeur infers creation
Through an inhuman eye.
Body broken by beauty;
A strange sickness succumbed to;
Abnormal abstraction which so perfectly captured
What it is to be human; which so typically is repetition;
Routine of daily, melancholy the night, around and around.
The place that makes me shake inside—
Inside peace, vindicated from the norm, truth be told
I cannot remember the precision of the sun: immense
Trust of affinity, what brings warmth.
The sharpness of the blades of grass.
Unduly pain caused by banality of life;
Ascension from a subdued kind—
Pure allure paused upon the mind
Of beings so accustomed to specificity that ambiguity
Is what inspires fear.
Fear.
Fear is what is brought by this immense space.

I turn to fear
When bleakness gets the best of me; when joy is gone,
Fear is my cousin; one stop away—
Always. What swirls in my mouth is the bitter taste of the universe
Whom I spit out depends completely on feeling; the world of which
Is lofty; mountain tops and valley-ways are metaphors for the ways in which I
Have become who I am; I am who I am because of You.

Half-forgotten memories of certain disposition, now a mind
Half full; consumed by the potent possibility of return.
I sit today with incomplete:
We sit, We have a talk, a contemplation of what once was,
A contemplation of new possibilities, assumptions of what would happen
If I returned to the same state: ready for anything, only needing
A reason to do, loving whatever came to me—
Living a life free from distraction, but also free to it.
A different distraction: the typical sought-out forms of self-indulgence.
Then was self-strengthening, now is self-pitying.
While a photograph (made with intent to remember
those feelings) is not enough, unfathomable.
The lake, the extreme elevation, the discomfort of it all; gone.
Now is the time to reflect, not the time to wish. Again is what I want;
Pity is what I have; I have learned not to take
More than I can carry, not to learn more than I can understand
Now is more important.
Reminders of that rock, vanished into Sublime:
Sun brought comfort, cold changed shape,
Water: slight metallic taste, mountain men, harmonic
landscapes, rolling hills—
An incomplete list
Incapable of total description. Whatever these forms; their
Vastness is what taught new words; a language.
Thought apart for all who live in
The place of higher thought; those who visit
Tread peacefully. Therefore I am here
Thinking of one that does not think
Of me. People leading life without
My being. I seek these places in my
Mind, a desire for a fragment of freshness to ease pain:
The night you left,
The rigidity of all things.
The rain in summertime smells of dirt.

I challenge what good thought
Brought such deep reflection for
I am the lover of life in the place where
Trees cannot grow. And I am the
Resilience: what one may do
Another may not be able; discomfort and
Solitude purer than life in a place with smoke and mirrors;
Those who surrender lack what they seek:
Energy. The kind of thought produced by the pure existence of which
I have learned from: describe complex
In simple terms, stripped clear. Too brash;
Slowing down creates truth. Split wood and smoke
Living with nature; always more powerful than
Sparks that reign upon city dwellers. Perception and sense
Fix my philosophy, I seek to learn from absence. To learn from
The place of higher thought.

As I am not there,
The only comfort I can fairly provide myself
Is one of my memories. The air here is not
What it was: a sense of physical presence,
Sharpness so precise that it’s hard to capture
Exactly where air filling lungs is from;
The heat so bare, fresh from frigid water,
Swept over mountaintops makes the air
Differ from the gloom of a city whose
Streets: crowded, dirty and impatient
Do not allow for freedom of movement.
How can I recompose?
I hope inability to describe
Or fully understand is not ultimatum.
Circle of repetition, Time is what
Forces and drives the true power
Of thought; the true divinity of memory itself:
A way to think in the past is not for
Everyone. Composition or recognition is not
For everyone what it was for me.
Perhaps even people who surrounded me
Did not. This deep sadness developed
From a long absence, let grow old
And to wrinkle over years and years
Of wear. You’re still there, but I’m still
Here. Now is not the same, but want
I will ‘til I can rully recount. Your sorrowed
Eyes, a separation; it will not be the last, We say,
But won’t it? Life a circle that does not
Break but somehow shattered glass
Still cuts, every wear and tear.
Heartbeat pounding through.
I yearn for someone to know these places
Like I have, these cliffs where air not touch ground,
time which does not pass; a rock that’s tossed
Doesn’t make a sound;
But what I hold dearest: an unforgetfulness, stinging Joy-
Joyous Rebellion, a worshiper of etching
Of the wind. Do you forget my presence?
From you I take fear and joy, pleasure and pain;
For I have never lived in vain or sorrow
From the very nature of your
Clarity.