Seeing the volcano from below just another mountain but this mountain speaks of the earth disgorging its molten guts of lightning arcing in ten zillion volt flashes of God's terrifying grace of geologic upheaval that happened before anyone knew anything about God that happened before anyone knew anything
We were kids on a long weekend decrepit jeep pickup camper shell over the bed we stopped for an old Indian woman and her son hitchhiking I remember the strange musky smell of her sitting by me on the truck's bench seat like food I'd never eaten or a hand-me-down blanket from the last century
We camped at Green Lake and green it was set out the next day fully unprepared for our climb
But our young limbs carried us to a precarious summit the South Sister nothing but sky all around and dreams distant peaks the sleeping volcanoes of the Cascade Range stretching into the vastness of north and south Such peace
And here now I drown in a deep web of tangled memories
Vistas I once surveyed live and breathe in my mind people I once knew still whisper in my ear though they are long dead
How do they live on? Who tends these grass-grown graves? Who speaks for these dead?