Poetry Confessions: Tea Time with the Poet Laureate
(Editor: Tanya)
In this blessed season, I would like to share a story about a lonely Mountain and a fiery Monsoon. They find joy, love, and contentment right here in Flint, Michigan! I recommend a cup of peppermint tea and candy cane swirl to sip with this taste of poetic prose. Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa!
The Mountain and the Steaming Monsoon By Semaj Brown
Once upon a time, seven long years into the future, there was an honorable mountain who was also a man. Quite abruptly, the man-mountain felt an unusual burst of heat. The mountain’s icy apex had begun to melt, releasing fresh water streams from two wide-set fissures. Tributaries meandered down the rocky terrain, giving the distinct impression the mountain was in a perpetual state of river cry. He, the mountain, prided himself as a rugged naturalist, and thus became increasingly concerned about his image. The noble mountain was being worn down by environmental problems associated with erosion. This was indeed true, for he had his bald head to prove it. The industrious mountain enlisted the assistance of his cousin, Plate Tectonics, who assisted in breaking the mountain off from the Western Range, to journey in search of that much rumored, controversial global warming heat source.
Burdened, he traveled into the millennium with a sure-footed goat attached to his back. His cliffs donned prickly pine bushes that passed for unkempt facial hair. A tree that doubled as a unicorn’s scepter and weather vane extended from the middle of his brow. Dangling, uprooted roots hung from his ears and from between his toes.
Suddenly, the mountain’s tears of streaming rivers flooded into fast rising rapids. Unknowingly, the rocky mass of elevation was approaching the Seventh Dimensional Shift! He had crossed over into an alternate reality, theForbidden Zone of Semaj. Semaj, the steamy monsoon maker was a cauldron of terrestrial storms and fiery combustions. She was a feminine creature with twin tempests exploding behind her placid gaze.
The mountain-who-was-a-man spied, captivated from the inflatable raft deep inside his cave. He was mesmerized by the monsoon’s dark flaming hair and whirl pooling sparks of gale force winds. Never before had he seen an ocean spring from a being, ignite into fire, then extinguish into smoky vapors drawn straw-like through invisible portals back into its sublime origin. Wow! In a strange poetic wondrous way, he felt that he knew her and so he intoned, “Sistah, sistah, don’t I know you, sistah?”
She responded by burning, blowing him hot coals of beaded rain. Unbeknownst to the Steaming Monsoon, the Mountain-who-was-a-man was also the wisest dust gatherer of the last one thousand years, as well as an expert juggler and Family Physician, who knew like no other how to handle the ancient elements of fire and water.
First, he concocted a formula of golden mountain dust to secure and temper her magnetic scalding to a warm glow.
Second, the mountain made rich fertile mud from her scarlet torrents to harvest a garden of hope, of figs, of diamonds.
Finally, the mountain took one courageous step beyond her sweltering veils into the nucleus of the monsoon’s eye to discover and marvel at a beautiful woman, vulnerable beneath her garments of seaweed and ash. It was a goodly union. They married and my sources tell me they reside in some exotic place called Flint, Michigan, where they are perfectly domesticated, joyful.
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This story, “The Mountain and the Steaming Monsoon,” was inspired by looking into Eye Storm, an acrylic painting rendered by Dr. James Brown (2003).
Semaj Brown is author of the book, “Bleeding Fire! Tap the Eternal Spring of Regenerative Light” available on Amazon.
