Doris is a Mountain

Hello from Hamilton, Montana:

Yes, Tess has been loafing.  So many canine pals to during our daily runs that she has not committed her writing energy to The Larch Blodgette for a few days.  So, while she sleeps, I'll put up a poem.  Mount Doris is a "siren" guarding the Flathead Valley to it's west. The Mainstem of the Flathead River and it's three Forks; The North Fork, the Middle Fork and the South Fork lie below her peak.  So, imagine a mountain resting at the very north end of the Swan Range in such a position and you have Doris overshadowing the Flathead Valley.  Note too, if you have your map in your lap, that the Flathead and it's forks are sources for energy from the mountains of Glacier National Park, and the Great Bear and the Bob Marshall Wildernesses.

For context in the poem to follow, note that the South Fork of the Flathead drains the east-side of Mount Doris.  Columbia Falls, MT is in a key location a few miles west of the forks along the mainstem of the Flathead River.  The Town of Hungry Horse is hazardously located at the point where the mainstem does indeed fork to flow north along the west boundary Glacier NP, the Middle Fork flows along the southern boundary of Glacier NP and into the Great Bear Wilderness and the South Fork heads south into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  This is powerfully inspiring land for men.  Early white men working on the massive dam forming Hungry Horse Reservoir called the mountain that is guardian of it all "Doris" and probably named other mountains after the women of their desires or left in their homelands abandoned for the wealth calling in the Wild, Wild West.  What could lead white men working in this powerful place to name a mountain Doris?  This is the question imagined by this poem.  I wrote this poem for my friends, Roland and Jane Cheek after a visit to their longtime home below Mount Doris.  They live in Doris' shadow as the sun rises slowly late each morning and in her reflected sunlight on cloudless afternoons. 

Some Call Me Doris

Some call me Doris.
An usual name
For a mountain, to be sure.
When people look up to me from the valley below
Some gazes follow what seems
A "turkey-track" tattoo
From mid-rib to shoulder.
Some define triple avalanche scars
While others cover their eyes, lest imagination
Shows my cleavage too biblically bare.
But, as siren of the Flatheads,
(All the Forks I watch for you,
As would any good mother-goddess)
I'm the gatekeeper of these river's dividends.

Once, in the dark, but recent past
There were working men of immigrant denominations
Filling my eastern valley with concrete and steel.
A dam to rebuke my daughter, South Fork
To drown their fears and power their dreams.
This silent watery grave
Behind some corporate man's greedy wall.
That mystically turbulent watery voice
Now a turbines droning hum,
An omen to caged tribes of wiser Red men.

Those men of steel and mortar
Named mounts for my sisters too.
I see some still and afar:
South to Charlotte and Sarah and Helen
West across my sunset valley  
Waits Ashley too.
Who were these women
So loved to become
Mythical mountains
In men's minds and soulful moans?
Yes, how many of my girls
Had their names sung to the heavens
Only to become forgotten
When our canvas-cribbed Hungry Horse houses
Were torn down to protect a false innocence?

What matter to us
(Our weary lonesome lovers are gone now too)
That so few of our names remain
On mapped peaks guiding modern unknowing men;
Ashamed now to call their mountains "teats"
Or scream "mother"
Or some orphaned whore's names to the sky.
Yet deep within, men still cuddle thoughts
To warm their weary souls
When lost in the wild.
The wilderness where all men flee
To a wild darkness sleeping deep within
Fearful hearts worn bare of work,
Blinded nightless city eyes,
Tortured lungs in self-fouled air.

We are all time's travelers
You Men, we femininely hypnotic peaks. 
We are all invisible destinies
When time will have it's way with us.
 'Til then, as oft' before,
My girls and I will watch
Young boys and old down-trodden men
Looking up; rising… euphoric in their manic dreams
Seeking our comfort
To fight the fire
Consuming their tormented souls.

    For Roland and Jane Cheek