The View From Corey Mesler’s Mountain

I reached out to Corey Mesler and asked him to write a little bit about his work in the latest print issue of Dark Sky Magazine. Here is what he said:

I have a series of poems about The Mountain. What does The Mountain mean to me? It means height. It means chutzpa. It means aspiration. It means fearlessness. I come to The Mountain with hat in hand. Some days I come to the mountain with my head in hand.

Sometimes The Mountain talks to me. It tells me things that later become poems. It speaks to me the way the brown cardinal at the birdfeeder does. It speaks to me the way sheet lightning speaks. It tells me the same kinds of secrets known by the seas, the winds, the dunes, the worms, the deep woods.

I am a writer because I have to observe. Because I want to observe, because observation is a calm central point, a calm from the concentration that goes beyond concentration. I want to understand what I see and I fall short always. I fall short in my ability to concentrate, and to ignore concentration. I fall short of my own desires. I fall short of what I expect to be as father, son, lover, friend, writer. I fall short of all my goals.

The Mountain is one goal. The other goals are hidden. They are behind The Mountain. As collaboration I offer this thought from Flann O’Brien: “It were better for a man to die on the mountain from celestial water than to live at home famished in the centre of the plain.”

Corey’s poem, “More Noise About the Mountain” appears in Dark Sky’s latest print issue.