(Johnson, Vermont)

Yet another metamorphic 
swimming hole, waterfall 
where language fails.

Gneiss, schist, slate.
You can hear nouns meta-
morphose to verbs, gnarl, shiver, split,

then strip down, tumble 
in granitic kettle-holes 
and camouflage themselves

in green water, green 
because pines hang 
above the fault line

and shade language 
from blue-blank sky where some-
body’s watching, listening

to the syllables of delight. 
This is the place of pre-
delight, before the light

blinked on in our fore-
brains and pained us with fore-
knowing. No, this place

delivers a hiss, a wordless 
rush through gray clefts, 
the high chattering scream

of being submerged in momentary 
cold so cold the body knows 
undeniably, indelibly,

these are the high walls 
of journey’s end, of anaerobic 
last-gasp, body-turning

blue. And tongues become 
like limbs trying to climb 
the high cliffs of death

to clutch a purchase 
on exposed outcrops 
where words can sink

their cleats, pitons, 
grappling hooks, inventions 
that turn humans pre-

human: moss-crawler, rock-clasper, 
some thing attached to cold stone 
that owns no language—

micaceous, gneiss-spark, 
fissile schist, granite-fault— 
that goes on climbing

as if it were stone-dumb, 
attached by its tongue 
to the thing, the very thing.