Thursday, June 16, 2016

Spaces: Outer and Inner



Last Spring, in Vermont, heading back to Quebec


When I am in flat or mountainless territory
it feels like a piece of the background's gone missing.

When I am in cities that build skyward, stacking their residents in
vertical towers, it feels claustrophobic
in a way that mountains towering over and enclosing me
don't.

I need to see mountains like some need to smell the sea;
feel their thereness, their accessibility
to mitigate the reminder of their 
absence.

I only know Vermont, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania mountains,
(and a glimpse, once, of the Alps, which
took my breath away.  Literally.)

I would not fare well in the desert, methinks.
Or places that know no snow.

Environment ... how it molds us,
nourishes us,
erases us,
changes us,
defines us.

Missing those mountains when I re-see this old snapshot.