HIMALAYAN MORNING
My desert feelings can’t remember the flat line of their own horizons
and my valleys of shadow recall nothing
the darkness ever said to them.
I awake to an inexplicable altitude
and the music of the last voice I heard
before I woke up
echoing off vertical feelings that cover me
like the sunshine after it has lifted mist.
“Going up?”
The answer surrounds me, like the smell of coffee.
I yawn and stretch into the passing shapes of clouds
that seem to know just where they are going.
My peaks are everywhere.
At the end of a day’s climb
I stand upon the ridge of all that I have ever known.
The air is thin and bright.
I breathe as deeply as I can,
only to exhale in surprise.
A harmony beyond the sky has filled the deepest,
the everest part of me
and no matter where I look
I know the melody will go on forever
if only this afternoon
I can remember to memorize the tune.
Again last night I was certain that I never could
but tomorrow, once more, I believe I shall
remember one more note at least and this:
No matter what happens next
every note of the melody remembers every note of me,
even those that I have never heard,
the ones I must believe in enough to discover for myself
and then sing to my deserts and my valleys.
Ken Woodley 