Loowit (2003)

[bi_janus]

Loowit (2003)

Bi Janus

Loowitlatkla (Lady of Fire) was, in the myth of the people of the middle Columbia River, an old woman who was made by a powerful spirit immortal, then beautiful, and finally a mountain that white men call St. Helens

The hard paths

vouch us solitude

and we need

solitude to find

what is in us.

On the hard paths

we carry everything

important on us

and we need to see

what is in us.

At the end of day

at the midpoint

of the hard path

we are stripped,

as the thinning forest

is, to necessity.

Unsheltered in solitude

we reach in to see

what we can do

here, naked to

each other

on the mountain,

on the hard path

where no one

other will come.

Your scent and mine

on the hard path

begin an enquiry

in the ancient brain,

the brain of mammals

startled in an act.

We wonder who

takes whom

on the hard path

by the meltwater,

the meltwater almost

flashed to vapor

by what we find

in the solitude

of the hard path

on Loowit’s flank.