Time in Mind / I Saw a Mountain
Time in Mind
I have in mind a kind of time
That can’t be measured by clock
Or monitored by calendar;
Time that isn’t tucked away
In packages of seconds, days or centuries,
Doesn’t start when you wake up
Or wait for you while you’re asleep,
A different species altogether,
Hard to figure out:
Time like moonscape chaparral,
Time as dark as unlit streets,
Time as bright as an angry sun
That stares at you at noon
But loses sight of you at night;
Time as quiet as a curtain rod
That clutches the curtain from year to year
But lets it swing in the languid breeze;
Time like eyelet stars
Woven through the fabric of night;
Bodies of time through which we swim
From the shallow end of morning
To the landing of the night;
Time that lies in wait for you,
Hidden in the desert,
Deep among the creases
Of the sunbaked sand.
I have in mind a kind of time
That can’t be understood
But pulses through the ether:
Tip tap footsteps through the hall;
Boats bouncing on the rumpled sea;
Yawning morning, coral pink,
Streaks of grey in the afternoon;
Winding road of cobblestone.
I Saw a Mountain
A mountain stood upon the spot
Where I now stand;
Relieved of cliffs it once embraced,
Beaten to death,
Crushed beneath the wheel,
Its permanence denied;
It is gone, it is lost within an ocean
That neither you nor I can see;
Nothing left but an image
Etched upon the plate of memory
Which fades a little more
Each time it is recalled.
Its atoms tremble in the night,
Thrown for miles by random winds
And dropped upon the desert floor:
They are ashes, they are dust,
They are the mountain I once saw.
◊
I saw a mountain in my mind,
An imposing monument
And, in a moment, I saw it die.
That vision would not submit
To the words and thoughts
That marched through my mind
In close formation;
Reason drowned in a sea of what I saw;
I couldn’t move and, in my panic,
Sought comfort in the myth
Of lineal experience;
I looked for reassurance in my belief
That something follows something else
And every moment supersedes
The river of moments that came before
But I found no solace in that conceit:
It made no sense to me.
◊
I am lost upon the very spot
Where a mountain died so long ago,
Whose heavy bones were ground to sand
And yet I see it still: I see a mountain
Where none exists and I see, as well,
The shifting dunes that stand in place of it;
A mountain crumbles, grain by grain,
But, even so, I also see
A thousand moments thrown together;
A mound of sand becomes a stair;
I take a step and then another,
I climb, I rise, I walk from star to star
And, far below, I see a world I never saw:
A sprawling forest grows
Where once a mountain stood.
Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. Until a few years ago, he wrote short stories exclusively but now divides his time equally between poetry and prose. Walter’s writing has appeared in a number of literary publications including The Carolina Quarterly, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Closed Eye Open, The Writing Disorder, Beyond Words, Griffel, The Write Launch, The Raven Review, The Raw Art Review and others. His work is due to appear in forthcoming issues of the Iris Literary Journal, Pioneertown, and Fauxmoir. Walter lives in a suburb just outside Washington, D. C.
