by Alex Carrigan
—Raye Hendrix
There’s so much more for it to know instead. The mountain knows how many more rocks need to flake away before it no longer stands tall in the range. It knows how the streams flow out of it like cereal into a bowl, how they gather in pools and rivers around its waist and at its feet. It knows how its trees bend in the wind, the sound nettles and branches make when they hit its chest after a strong enough gust. The mountain doesn’t need to know the names of the insects that gather around its toes or those who try to ascertain which trails will lead to its ears. We can try to shout our names into the mountain, let ourselves be buried in its snowy peak to become part of its biological functions. But the mountain simply needs to wait, and it will forget. Remembering means the mountain allows events to happen over and over again, but we won’t be around long enough for it to commit us to its memory, so we’re better off hoping that the mountain at least thinks fondly of the idea of
us at its base when we’re gone, that it at least finds us as something for it
to grow over as it spreads itself thin. Maybe then we’ll be acknowledged,
but that’s only if the mountain is willing to fall in the first place.
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