Shasta
You can stand on red banks like a brilliant tree
Breathe toward the summit;
You can descend like an avalanche.
The mountain will not reject you
The mountain might eat you alive
But it will not reject you
The mountain might turn you over
The mountain might murder you in cold blood for your own stupidity
Or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time
But it will never deny you.
The mountain is exposed like a nerve
Ready to erupt at any moment.
Everything above 14,000 feet
Was carried, cradled, stacked, ripped, vomited
From the source
That lies like an unexploded bomb
That can throw molten metal two hundred miles.
To Mt Shasta, we must seem like
Dust mites
Well appointed
Columbia, North Face, REI wearing
Dust mites.
Marc Janssen started writing many novels but didn’t finish any of them. He’s a sprinter. Janssen did complete a poetry collection, November Reconsidered, published by Cirque Press. His verse can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.