Devil's Lake 

"How is Mountain Tai?
Its green is seen beyond State Qi and State Lu,
a distillation of creation's spirit and beauty.
It's slopes split day into yin and yang."
       – Du Fu, "Looking at Mount Tai"






Devil's Doorway
(Three Poems)

1.

We rise over narrow sunlit steps.
Chiseled flat and tilted backwards
the traveler does not mis-step.
The rocks become a stairway
up through a stationary palace.
Behind us, to our backs, we could
grow wings and dive like hawks
directly into the glacial lake.
Forward we might step into shadows.
Long ago devil's doorway glowed.


2.

Home is not waiting in the city.
Home is at the top on the quartzite
ridges which stand tall and fold
out like hard palms out over water.
Junipers break out from crevasses
like old men, withered, brittle,
silent, they see that you are coming
and your welcome is a gnarled
embrace, a small offering of berries.
From here, they say, you could
throw a berry and it would drop
to the bottom of the lake and grow.

3.

Along the East Bluff trail
we see the visitors come and go.
They have come from the backside
of the rim, under forest cover,
through the floating blanket of leaves.
We wonder where we would
plant a new home; near the creek?
We climb down a rock face
and slide through a thousand leaves
and land into an ancient rockfall.
Nothing scampers, there is no noise.
"It would take at least three weeks
to build a home before first snow."