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Tissiack's Tears
Tissiack’s Tears
“[F]or I was absorbed in the great Tissiack [Half Dome]-- I have gazed on Tissiack a thousand times -- in days of solemn storms, and when her form shone divine with the jewelry of winter, or was veiled in living clouds; and I have heard her voice of winds, and snowy, tuneful waters when floods were falling; yet never did her soul reveal itself more impressively than now. John Muir
Tissiack’s tears fall from her rain-stained face,
her profile one with the lichened rock.
She, the spirit of the Ahwahneechees,
speaks silently, with the voice of winds,
and presence of time past and present.
For a summer, my tent opened to her
With flaps opened, I peered upon her,
Confident that I understood her words;
But I was just imperiousness youth,
And youth distracts from truth.
Years later, I return to her and sit
in the moonlight at Mirror Lake.
As my eyes tire and grow unfocused,
I see her missing half in the water –
her half that’s not, her mystic moiety.
She whispers of life’s unhalves, and in the
rippled, reflective waters appears,
my unhalf – those thoughts, unthought and
that life, unlived; whereupon, I too shed tears.
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