A farmer-poet takes inspiration from Bhutan’s road widening.
Mountain roads again
The mountain roads, like New Year’s resolutions,
Start losing definition as soon as they are made.
Crumbling at the edges, sliding downhill,
We jounce along their non-existent margin
And I feel the clutch of gravity red in tooth
And claw. Each gully is a hundred feet deep.
As for the grand declivities, it’s best not to look,
You would not believe it anyway. There is something
In the contrasting scale of the grandeur of the mountains
And the smallness of the local lives that adds a bittersweet
Poignancy to this last playground of the gods.
Paro to the Pass
Dogs and sunflowers line the streets,
Tomorrow scaffolded in bamboo,
Prayer flags for the undead,
Cattle meandering the edge of infinity.
Jealous clouds swirl closed over steeps of conifers,
Emerald flakes of paddy-fields at the bottom
Of some other world. Orchids and ferns in high branches
Stringing feathers of moss on a mountain’s sigh
Slicks of mud and rocks across what was never a pathway
Cannabis sativa bordering the so called road, tourists
And guides fill the café Druk, empty their bladders,
Drink their coffee, check out their souls on their i-phones.
River of Dreams
The river of everybody’s dreams
Runs by my window
Carrying somebody’s future
From the shrinking glaciers
Of the Himalayas
To the spinning prayer wheels
of the lesser gods —
The turbines of
The electricity generators,
Selling the power of god
To the godless.
The Golden Buddha on the Mountain
The golden Buddha on the mountain
Collects the gold of the rising sun. However,
The back alley of Timphu beneath my window
Collects rubbish the way a dead dog collects flies.
The rats and cats and pigeons have checked it out
And what remains is mostly plastic and too short
Shards of bamboo, and something has made a nest
In the straw, and green plants are growing in it.
Meanwhile the Golden Buddha on the mountain
Has his head in the clouds.
The Mountain Road
The road we drive in the mountains
Is not really a road, but a place
Where a road might one day be.
For now it is a track cleared between
Fallen rocks — rocks that fall each time
The sleeping Thunder Dragon shrugs
Her green scaled coils. Meanwhile
The rain weakens the grasp of everything
Until even my mind slides sideways
On this slippery slick of insubstantiality
That calls itself a road. One day the cows
And horses will all be confined behind
Fences, one day the dogs will all be micro-
chipped, one day the roads will have lines
painted all the way down their centres.
One day — but please, not yet.
The Mountains
There is something about the mountains
That ennobles people
That makes each breath more precious
Each act more courteous
Each modest girl more beautiful
Each gesture more deliberate
Each colour brighter, the sky bluer,
The crows louder,
The rocks more dangerous.
The Road
We drive the fragile roads clinging
desperately to the vertical
sides of mountains.
Fallen rocks force us to the edge,
already fractured and friable.
I look out the window and the suck
of the abyss aches the soles of my feet.
The lip in front is visibly fissured,
longing for the void.
The angle
Of repose is eighty five degrees
on the slope below,
except it is not repose.
At best it is the angle of
hesitation.
The White Cat
The white cat and I welcome the morning
Hanging grey and damp over the valley.
Water seeps where once glaciers ground
The mountains away. Hills still echo to the
Gullet scraping cries of black necked cranes
Long flown to Tibet, in secret forests black
Bears bide their time. We are the fatal flaw
In this delicate balance between horses and
Potatoes, barley and radishes, where the loudest
Sound is the hum of bees, the tap of a builder’s
Hammer. The roads here cling to the sides
Of mountains by the grace of gods I do not know,
Their wrath a thunder of rocks sweeping us all
Into the jaws of the dragon. The white cat wants
To help with my writing but I fear she knows
No more than me as she settles purring on the page.
Thunder Dragons
The rocks of the mountains have no voice
Until they have the voice of thunder.
But if you did not listen to them when they
Were silent, it is too late to listen to them now.
They do not know the skills of dialogue and
Discussion, they only know the way of decree
By tumult, the proclamation of destruction
To everything in their path. The trees below
The road bear raw wounds in high branches
Torn and broken by aerial assailants of undeterrable
Intent — and they are the lesser gods. Thunder
Dragons remove whole trees, entire hillsides.
© Peter Bishop 2016.
Peter Bishop is a short story writer, poet and retired wagyu farmer. Peter is a frequent flyer with Writer’s Journey. When he is not travelling and writing with us in various locations, he spends his time between Scone, NSW and Palm Beach, Sydney.
