Mount Monadnock, William Preston Phelps, c.1898
Δ
How many shades
did he see
in the distant bedrock
to translate
light to color
vantage point to view
to edge the mountain’s
long broad shoulders
hue of quartzite, schist
against an autumn sky
russet, cedar
hickory, umber
did he love the mountain
accordion fold of cliff
and jag hidden
in tiny sprigs
of far Balsam fir
where are those paintings now
that his family
and the farm are gone
Δ
I am no mapmaker
and this warbler song
I cannot place to name
it has been a year
since I’ve heard him sing
what care
can I give his solitude
little messenger
untranslatable
make me silent as the page
aperture of light
for the bedrock
sees us, hears us
fills fold and fissure
in duff, rhodora
microscopic life
Δ
Onzaamidoon Wiijayaaw
Awakaanag
tells me, raven magic
do not try to understand
there are powers beyond you
Raven medicine
will shape inner being
that is
until the Jesuits come
and the English soldiers
come, and the Puritans
who too denounced
the primitive superstition
of talking with animals
they wanted hide
fur and feather, souls
I hear
spirit, niwaskw
I hear
breathing, nasawan
the voice, lalômowôgan
kchimkazas, raven
aboriginal messenger
may I call you
grandmother, friend
speak with tongues given you
song of caw and awk
that calls me now
toward the long twilight of winter
when hard snows
cover this rock
I know
you will be there
from Mônadenok, published respectfully in Appalachia (2024), The Ecological Citizen (2021), and Kestrel (2023)
Read more poems from this project in Ran Off With the Star Bassoon and The Ecological Citizen
To stay updated on publishing information for this project, please email me here.
Δ
Mount Monadnock stands at 3,165 feet above sea level and resides in southern New Hampshire near the town of Jaffrey, what are ancestral lands and the home today of Pennacook, Cowasuck, and other western Abenaki and Anishinaabe Ojibwe peoples. The following work comes from a long lyric poem currently in progress about this mountain:
Harmony + Evolution: a Dialogue
a hypertext essay / 2021
How a favorite mountain inspires poetry
Interview + poem from Mônadenok with Todd Moe
North Country Public Radio / 2022
A poet's winter in Vermont: art, birds, connections
Interview + poem from Mônadenok with Todd Moe
North Country Public Radio / 2023
A poet's return to the Adirondacks in a season of renewal
Interview + poem from Mônadenok with Todd Moe
North Country Public Radio / 2023
Texts + Art
New Familiar Abenakis and English Dialogues by Jos. Laurent, Abenakis, Chief (1884, reprinted by Applewood Books); Thoreau on Birds (Beacon, 1998); “Monadnock from Chesham,” oil on canvas, 17.75 x 30 in., private collection (monadnockart.org); “Monadnoc” from Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1899); "Monadnock" by Iva H. Drew (Granite Monthly, 1907); "Monadnock Through the Trees" by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Collected Poems, 1921); Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock by Galway Kinnell (Houghton Mifflin, 1964); The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (1977, reprinted by Canongate); Things that I do in the dark by June Jordan (Beacon, 1969); Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon (Hill and Wang, 1983); Pennacook ornament photographed by Hillel Burger found in The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People by Colin G. Calloway (University of Oklahoma, 1990); The Legend of Wonalansett by Charles H. Glidden (Newtone, 1914); “Mount Monadnock” by Allen H. Bent (Appalachia, 1917); The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation by Frederick Matthew Wiseman (University Press of New England, 2001); Abenaki Indian Legends, Grammar and Place Names by Henry Lorne Masta (reprinted by Global Language Press, 2008); The Original Vermonters: Native Inhabitants Past and Present by William A. Haviland and Marjory W. Power (University Press of New England, 1981); The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest by Francis Jennings (University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England edited by Siobhan Senier (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), “Rare Plant and Exemplary Natural Community Inventory of Mt. Monadnock State Park, Gay State Forest, and Adjacent Town of Jaffrey Lands” written by William F. Nichols and Daniel D. Sperduto (nh.gov, 2002); “Thoreau on Monadnock” by Peter J. Thompson (Appalachia, 2013); “The Geology of the Monadnock Quadrangle” by Katharine Fowler-Billings (State Planning and Development Commission of New Hampshire, 1949); “The Flora of Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire” by Henry I. Baldwin (New England Botanical Club, 1974); Legends of Stone, Bone, and Wood by Tsonakwa & Yolaikia (Origins Program, 1984)