Teeth of Cascadia

Alpine wind
Falling
Forever
The air’s so thin

Leaves and stone and rain
And mud and snow and
Water and steps and slopes
And links in the chain

Then you don’t know the mind
Then you don’t understand
Then you don’t know the bite
Then you know the might

We’re dancing on the tongue
Looking up at
White cliffs
And granite outcrops

Then you don’t understand
As you walk and admire the span
Of every horizon so far below
The Teeth of Cascadia

Then you’ll know the plan
To get there
Was

Worth it more than you can know
Then you don’t know the flight
It took to get here

You don’t know
You’re not just human
You’re a machine who climbed
Into the giant’s jaw

Just a pinprick
Just an impossible dot
On the snowy white teeth
In a torquoize mouth of
The giant Cascadia

Improbable caught
No way off the rock

Lost in the trenches
And cliffs
And slopes
In the mouth

The jagged maw
Snowcapped and cold
Alpine and warm
Somehow never explored

Glancing bites
Among the tree horizon
We were set up
And green flesh pushed away

To rise above were
The hard stone and lakes
Then you know the might
Then you know the bite by

Green below the stone
Jagged chained grey

Bow down to the
Beast of Cascadia
Lay down like an
Awe-struck follower

Walk along
It’s jaw
And pray it doesn’t eat you
Or that the slopes of stone
Don’t take your life

Understand the beauty it holds
But know that any wrong move
Can take you tumbling down
Those same beautiful mountains

Bow down to the
Beast of Cascadia

Stand down
To the
Teeth of Cascadia