First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain.
—Donovan, “There Is a Mountain,” adapted from Qingyuan Weixin
When is a mountain a mountain?
When Ordovician wind wears away
soil to limestone bedrock.
Mother of all mountains rises in waves
above the valley like a promise,
remembering bison and eagle, bear-stalker
and tree-hewer who strode toward the sun.
Lark and wood-thrush among leaves
of oak and hickory call from the mist,
foxes and deer step delicately among ferns,
ironweed dances with monarch and eyed blue
to the song of katydid and cicada.
When is a river a river?
When sky-filled streams leap over boulders
to plunge to the deep heart of the forest.
Who has blown the mountain apart,
filled headwaters and dammed up the river?
Those who do not remember the owls
awakening to the storm of stars.
When is a mountain not a mountain?
When it has fallen into the valley.
When is a river not a river?
When it is filled with the mountain.
When will we know the mountain and river?
When they are gone.
—
Deborah Fleming’s nonfiction collection Resurrection of the Wild won the PEN-America Art of the Essay Award for 2020. Her second nonfiction collection Ghosts of an Old Forest will be published in 2025. She has also published one novel, five books of poetry, four volumes of scholarship, and stories, poems, and essays in journals. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. For many years she served as editor and director of the Ashland Poetry Press.
