Walk a trail down to the lake
    mountain ash and elderberries red
    old-growth log bodies blown about,
    whacked down, tumbled in the new ash wadis.
    Root-mats tipped up, veiled in tall straight fireweed,
    fields of prone logs laid by blast
    in-line north-south down and silvery
    limbless barkless poles —
    clear to the alpine ridgetop all you see
    is toothpicks of dead trees
    thousands of summers
    at detritus-cycle rest
    — hard and dry in the sun — the long life of the down tree yet to go
    bedded in bushes of pearly everlasting
    dense white flowers
    saplings of bushy vibrant silver fir
    the creek here once was "Harmony Falls"
    The pristine mountain
    just a little battered now
    the smooth dome gone
    ragged crown

    the lake was shady yin —
    now blinding water mirror of the sky
    remembering days of fir and hemlock—
    no blame to magma or the mountain
    & sit on a clean down log at the the lake's edge,
    the water dark as tea.

    I had asked Mt. St. Helens for help the day I climbed it,    so seems she 
    did

The trees all lying flat like,      after that big party Siddhartha went to on 
the night he left the house for good, crowd of young friends whipped 
from sexy dancing dozens crashed out on the floor

angelic boys and girls, sleeping it off. A palace 
orgy of the gods but what "we" see is "Blast Zone”
 sprinkled with clustered white flowers

"Do not be tricked by human-centered views," says Dogen, And 
Siddhartha looks it over, slips away—for another forest
to really get right down on life and death.

If you ask for help it comes.
But not in any way you'd ever know
thank you Loowit, lawilayt-la, Smoky Ma
gracias     xiexie  grace