Bony Core
Lorrain Tolliver
This mountain had been gashed
with a liquid slash.
Maggot-man works
into the guts of the corpse.
White bone boulders lie here
in marrow-white slit
beside the white bubbles
of the mountain's blood.
Mountains, llike people,
have their strength
at their bony cores
where frightening might
lightning strike,
stalking blight,
comet flight,
blizzard swipe
all the whiote.
Up here, in this bone yard
all shutters into white
in the flickering twilight.
A kalei8doscope of dark and light
heralds night:
bleached cliff, pale stones,
pallis tree trunks, gray roots,
smoky twigs
fade off to an ash mountain side
and a slate sky.
Here and there isa tear
in a brown flesh of the soil,
and way up near the summitt
the dressy pine spursand purple flowers.
The core of the mountain
informs lost wanderers
with death and creation.
Do we as much
when lovely flies
gorge on our still bodies?
