Highland Echoes

The Mountain has been a site of divine inspiration, strength and resilience, and the mystery of the unknown

Each poem from Idyllwild-Pine Cove in the Summer of 2025 to the exploration of the Catskills, Berkshires, and the Adirondacks in the fall and winter explores the different facets of the physical and metaphysical mountain. Each poem is filled with imagery of the landscape along with legends and tales ranging from biblical traditions to Phoenician burial rites, Iroquois stories, and Mayan portals.

St Hyacinth ( Idyllwild, CA 8/2025)

In this poem, I use both religious and environmental language to trace my own passage out of the desert and into the mountains. As I moved  “down Palm Desert Drive” in Palm Springs and towards Idyllwyld, leaving the Ace Hotel and towards FWB fest, and began to climb, I’m describing leaving the glass box of the desert.  As I began to heat up, I looked for relief outside of it in the forest. This comes after a particularly challenging time in my life but a very rewarding one where I was plagued by health issues that left me isolated. I use words like “benediction,” “reliquary,”  “Ostentorium” and  “ciborium” from the legend of St Hyacinth or San Jacinto, which is the name of a mountain in Idyllwyld. The legend goes that he went to the chapel to rescue the ciborium containing the Eucharist from the tabernacle. As he was leaving, he heard the voice of the Virgin Mary, asking him not to abandon her to be desecrated, and he was able to carry both and leave. Language for me is both prayer and tool:  As I climb, my attention shifts from the theological to to the ecological.  Plants like “chuparosa”, “manzanita”, and “chamise" teach us  about survival: that burning and pruning are not endings but beginnings. These plants, local to the area, have regenerative properties under fire that mirror my own process of release and transformation as I was inspired to write this on the Aries Full Moon, which teaches us about purification and transformation. When I write “abscission into an accension,” I’m describing how shedding becomes rising through burning. 



From deserts I drudge

down Palm Desert Drive

from faraway dreams

Up and into immediate

diction-aries

I suddenly receive 

Lexical Hymns

Dictative


Squeaks of benediction

Surely not a die but (Genesis 3:4)

Definitely an assurance

A chance

a pip

of an idea existing in this

six-sided box 

a blessing


The Solarium of the Desert:

Paolo’s self-contained structure

A glassy, reflective stage where 

The universe’s ostensorium burns bright 

as I feel its verses: uniquely

Beaming , shining down on me

Illuminating this box


Luminescence


The light of the world(John 8:12)

First Glowing and then finally heating 

I get the faith to 

release shadows in this reliquary

And turn towards the tented tabernacles

Of forests to come





Like San Jacinto 

Saving both ciboriums and the self

With a certitude I

 lift my weight

Leave the box

and

begin to climb north


Up Banning and banishments 

Twists turn into  forests

Windings into an untwinning of ponderosa bark

Pondering past smoke trees and

through the chuparosa shrub whom for 

Leaflessness is a requirement for bloom

Prunings I honor and through

requiems I rise


Rituals that turn abscission into an accension

From cuts to burns

I set the ground and myself ablaze

Like the Manzanita tree and Chamise that surround--

Sounds of hissing and crackling 

Regrowth 

Resprouting 

Revival


I keep climbing towards Acme

 






A Beacon Of ( Beacon, NY 9/25)


This poem was about the beginning of my second semester at Parsons. Living in the town of Beacon, NY here it was where I finally got relief but it’s true what they say- it’s worse before it gets better. Taking the local transit up and down into the city, I used a bit of Spanish here, “momentáneamente” meaning temporarily, and “ deshebrandome de mi mismo” meaning separating myself from myself. In these moments, I felt like if I could just disappear I would get some relief, but there was enough of a source of hope in my life provided by the improvements that I was able to keep going.



Through catacombs

And Soon I see

Beacons of brightenings all around

Lights illuminated

A street light and lampost

Haste, I rush

Down Main Streets


Up Hudson river flows but 

Longing for deep valleys

I see flutters of something in the distance-

Are they flukes?

Just flickers of false falls and again

Will I only be left with this

everlasting presence?

The futility of feelings


Momentáneamente



I wish to switch myself 

Off-from light and 

On-to tracks 

as metro north motors churn 

Deshebrandome de mi mismo


I Misstep tepidly 

Lingering, piddling 

On flat edges 

I lean then brace

but pause

and breath





Fit for a Page ( Kingston , NY 9/25) 

I wrote this after visiting the small town of Kingston,NY. Starting from that thematically I decided to write a piece focused on a royal court. As I move out of isolation I am reminded of all the nobles and jesters in the court of life. I Invoke the image of Belshazzar’s Feast. In the feast, writing appears on the wall that is found unreadable as Belshazzar is desperate and once a reader is found, the King finds himself condemned. Here “elliptical symphonies” and “lyrical panics” become the new writing on the wall, signals of prophecy that emerge from noise. I use being weighed and found seeking, as opposed to wanting, which is what was on the wall at Balshazzar’s Feast as I find myself seeking in Mountains for something but unsure of what just yet. I add in pitch pine, a tree native to the Catskills and Hudson Valley, which thrives in poor soil and regenerates after fire, its twisted form a living emblem of persistence. When I write “Pitch Pine-ing for Shoots,” I describe  the emotional ache of becoming. Like the pine and the moss that cling to stone, I have found myself regrowing unevenly in this season


To read

Pages in courts

with courage dusted down from cupboards

Out of temples off shaky shelving

and into royal games


Gunning for growth and 

Grinding in dingy gymnasiums


Competing in Tourneys for the 

Crown centrepieces

At Balshazar’s Feast

With once surreptitious

Sounds turned into 


Elliptical sym-phonics and

Creating lyrical Panics  

Annunciatory trumpets

Being weighed ... and found seeking(Daniel 5:27)

Im-perfect-ly 



Pitch Pine-ing for Shoots 

From Buds

Growing back Stunted and Twisted

On Pincushion Moss Walls

Wrangling from Regrowth

Away from smooth bends 

And into spiky existence






Huntrxs to the World ( Hunter, NY 9/25)

I wrote this after a trip up into the Catskills from Hudson Valley. I relaxed here as I saw the fall foliages from a scenic chairlift and relished in a local Oktoberfest. It was here I began to see the next chapter of Mountains more clearly. The mixture of Yiddish (“tsuris”) and Japanese (“tsuba”) are  terms for struggle and a sword mount, respectively . When I “grab the sword and swipe with words that cut”, I’m describing how expression can be an act of release and how language can carve open hardship into something wholly different.  I talk about the Sugar Maple Tree here that is common in the area to describe the release. This felt similar to ki-urushi, the first step in making Lacquer which involves the release of sap from a tree, which was a subject of a previous poem. Ultimately, this poem is about the sweetness that follows endurance, the way that speaking can be a form of release. 


From these roots I reach

For rocks to stay steady as

My muscles stammer up staircases 


Up steppes of fall foliages made of

Deep oranges with 

Yearnings of Yellow 



Hues

That Prove Healing

And climbs revealing

Clearings of Humus

Rich soil presented before us

before we arrive at the


The Hissing of the 

Falls of Katerskill

Gushing and racing

A quick coming together

waves of hard knacks

A reunion of skills and

jagged scars these

strewn stripes

mediated by car-trips

And sky-rides

Up the

Mountain-top



A Topper

Of significant temporal landscapes:

Deserts

Islands 

Mountains 

Good times ahead

Bon-temps and temperate transformations 

Pro-tempore


From tough times and hard knocks from

tsuris to tsubas I solemnly

Swear survival

grab

the sword 

and swipe

 with

Words that cut

tssssk

Thoughts that bleed 

That ooze 

like Sugar Maple Trees

A Sticky Sweet Release







Phoenician Dreams ( Phoenicia, NY 9/25)


In this poem, written from a brief meal at Phoenicia Diner, in New York- a site of filming for the Apple TV Series, Severance,  I explore the voice and body as alchemical sites in the Phoenician and Greco-Roman world. The religious language “mḥsm ḥrṣ lpʾy” evokes an ancient incantation. This phrase describes an ancient Phoenician funerary practice in which a gold-foil mouth-plate, often attached by rings and ribbons, was placed over the lips of the deceased. Then I draw from biblical imagery as I am reminded of the Balsam fir found in the Catskills and connect it to the fragrant resin from the Balsam of  the Gilead tree, highly valued for its medicinal and aromatic properties. I see writing as a sort of pharmakon(φάρμακον.) A remedy that both releases and reseals. The use of the Latin phrase “Solve et Coagula,”  is from medieval alchemy, and it becomes my declaration of dissolution and recombination: I melt, split, and reform as sap does when heated and hardened. I switch to Greek here by starting with  hesychia(ἡσυχία),” meaning stillness, marking my spiritual posture of ascent as only possible in the stillness that Mountains can provide and I use alloiosis(ἀλλοίωσις) to describe the change from Deserts to Mountains as a qualitative change not a quantitative one. Then I shift to sphragizio (ἐσφράγισεν), or sealing, representing language’s power to bind, sanctify, and solidify. The poem closes with defixios(κατάδεσμος),” the thin sheets of lead known as curse tablets in the Greco-Roman world, reimagined here as benevolent spells. Through these layers of sacred speech and organic matter, I turn the act of writing itself into a ritual of release and re-sealing into something unknown

On my lips 

It tastes like 

An understanding 

and a scheming 

A dreaming 

mḥsm ḥrṣ lpʾy:


Muzzles of gold upon my mouth

Now smelting as matter

Begins to move

Pulverizing into 


Sap like the balsam fir around me 

Resin 

resounding and 

Residing

Presently now in Gilead (Jeremiah 8:22)


In this topological alloiois 

I declare: 

Solve et Coagula

This is a Sap that splits and leaks

But then 

hardens and heals

Only 



 


In hesychia-

In still heights and hills it can 

sphragizio:

Move from a stutter

to a seal

and a stamp

Creating definitive defixios


These benevolent bindings

Climbings and 

Scrawlings of emptiness

Onto rock 

into public fixation

Into fate and a future 










Fool’s Silver and Grey Locks  ( North Adams, MA 10/25)



 I went to see Greylock Mountain which inspired the next poem, Grey Lock/ Fool’s Gold. This made me think about Pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold. While it is modernly referred to as that, it made me explore the many uses of Pyrite in the ancient world. In the Mayan civilization, Pyrite was used in rituals to connect to the underworld, known as Xibalba, especially in divination by Shamans or royals. The Pyrite, which was used along with hallucinogenics, and other practices like bloodletting, was supposed to be this portal. Its reflective nature was used to symbolise the surface of water like cenotes, which were understood to be portals where spirits travel. The bloodletting they said would produce these visions of snakes as their blood flowed onto sheets of Amate.


Built by Fool’s Silver 

And

Grey Locks of Golden 

Pyr sparking as well as it strikes

Against steel and stone

Twine Producing Tones of

Shocks and cracks

Clefts and Chasms 

Of rocky lines unfolding

Into tesserae

Timed

Treasures

Of mosaic 

Shining 

Polished 

Py-rite

And by-ritual

all-night of s-crying into 

And screaming onto

This glassy 

Mirror of

Deep watery motion 

Future Memories

Reflecting back into us

like ce-notes 

Resounding visions of serpents

Simmering and slithering 

Through Copal smoke

 From pent up blood-

-Letting and flowing

Into bark sheets of Amate

From the Fig Tree




 


Sentient life forcing stuck

Needles vibrating with wind spirit

Listening through the bark 

Like bows that quiver

with sound 

Vernally vibrating 

In a state of penumbra

Pentads of needles bracing  until

Five nations become one


Once Four roots

Now spread across the compass

Sending prayers up

releasing fear down

Softening grief and

Asking for clarity

Turning to Canaan




Promised Landings

Delivering on promissory

Notes of White Pines


Lithesomely lingering in

Yokun-town, these tall 

central stemmings 


Weapons buried from root 

To Trunk and Crown

Through breath and brians 

From pasts into presence and future

Sky-beings of



 



Prayers of Promised Landings   (Lenox, MA 10/25)



I went to Lenox,  also known as Yokuntown to the Mohicans, which inspired Prayers of Promised Landings. The white pines there made me think of the Iroquois legend, where the Five Nations were united under the Peacemaker and their weapons buried beneath a pine, the five needles symbolizing strength in unity. In a breathing-with-trees class at Miraval Berkshires, we sat outside, and practiced aligning ourselves with the white pines. At the end of the class I learned that the instructor thought I was a different Brian Gomez, a prior relationship and source of anxiety, and this made me laugh. This poem became an exploration of my internal fractured selves, being brought together into one like the nations became unified.


Standing and steel

Snow-shoeing away flies

I stand 

As I make my way around 

This Heart 

Lake

Making infinite loops:

A figure-eight trace

Making die-cut-hearts

Creating cinereous 

tracings

Cismontane

I land cleanly

At the Adirondak Loj

Heat up and 

Head out




See you

Star-side !

Siding down windward


From the west and

To-wards wins 

Trading wards and non slip grips for

Slides of wet snowy rolls of powder

ava-lanching 

And launching out of  

Failures to 

and from the East wind




 



Scarface Mountain ( Lake Placid/Saranac Lake , NY 11/25)


 I went to Lake Placid and hiked around Heart Lake, with Scarface Mountain nearby, which inspired the poem. The snowy slopes and whistling wind made me think about how the heart can be reluctant to move on, and how it takes effort and at times tracing to navigate failures and fears. Walking  through the landscape became a metaphor for tracing paths around the heart, making loops, leaving marks, and finally landing at the Adirondack Loj to warm up, finding a place of comfort and peace.