Thinking Of Mountains

I don’t have a passport yet
and I don’t have lots of cash
so I won’t be in Europe
to watch French Open tennis
from a chair next to the court
on the Roland Garros clay.

But if I were in Paris
as much as I love tennis
I’d be thinking of mountains
while I sat by the clay courts
and the two mountains I mean
wouldn’t be these two mountains:



Rather than sit in Paris
I would want to walk in Aix
and visit Cézanne’s mountain
and for that I’d break out paints
without even attempting
to draw it as a cartoon.



And though the red clay is cool
I’d rather be down-right cold
and visit the volcano
erupting under the ice—
it’s like real-life alchemy—
melting the Iceland glacier.



In the Godzilla movies
monsters come out of mountains.
I could see a dinosaur
escaping from the glacier
where the Iceland volcano
melted away ancient ice.

I’d like to write a story
about the kind of monster
that would emerge from the rocks,
the wild, convoluted planes,
the tones, half-tones and shadows,
that hypnotized Paul Cézanne.

I bet these Hollywood days
the only script that would sell
would be about a monster
that hid in these two mountains
and how a brave scientist
solved the mystery with science.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



The Fuzzy Green Balls Aren’t Monsters


Maybe The Fuzzy Green Balls Are Monsters



Roland-Garros 2010