Poetry / Our Way Word Brother
The day was turned to midnight, and the earth unzipped by squalls;
the heavens suffered tremors, and our windows turned to walls.
We crowded ‘round the fire, feeling smug and safe and warm.
That’s when our elder brother called out, “Come and see the storm.”
We turned him down politely, and he left to go alone,
but we couldn’t let him leave us on the darkest day we’d known.
We begged him, “Stay”--he answered, “Come”--and one by one we came;
for cold and wind and wet and roar, we left our dying flame.
He led us to the mountain that no man had ever crossed,
where dead trees shimmered in the rain, all bent and tempest-tossed;
where howling winds tore grasses at the roots, and flung the earth
to Mother Nature’s trembling womb to die a natural birth.
The rain whipped through our eyes and through our ears and through our brains.
It drowned our tongues and bruised our skin and poured through all our veins.
In fear we begged our brother, “Let’s go back to where it’s warm.
We can’t climb this mountain in the middle of this storm.”
“I’ll show you how,” he promised. “Do exactly what I do.”
He began to climb the mountain, and we tried to follow, too,
but our eyes were blind with darkness,
and our ears heard only rain,
and the ground was wet and muddy, and the whole thing seemed insane;
and we thought about our fire, and our roof, and all our clothes
that waited dry for us at home. The more we thought of those,
the harder seemed the upward climb; and piecemeal we let go
our brother’s holds, and slid back down to safer land below.
We heard our brother shout in joy that he had reached the top,
and one last time we called his name and beckoned him to stop.
“Come see the view from here,” he cried. “What you can’t see from there—
all is calm and all is bright, and very much aware.”
“That’s good,” we said. “Now come back down; there’s nothing more to do.”
But still he bid us follow him. He wanted us, we knew;
but cold rain beat upon us like a thousand little knives
in a thousand different places of our thousand little lives.
But we couldn’t climb his mountain—and he cried,
although we pointed out to him that we had really tried.
He said he must be heading for the mountain’s other side
but he would leave a path for us to follow when it dried.
We went back to our shelter, where our flame no longer burned,
and waited for our brother, but he never has returned.
We sometimes think he watches from the mountain high above.
On windy days we think we hear him call our names in love.
We’ll follow him someday, I’m sure—his path has been made wide
by others who have gone his way—the ones who really tried.
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