(my calling-card work, inspired by the Hellroaring Plateau, which rises opposite the Beartooth Pass in Southern Montana) I. Come, tread the heights of Hellroaring, my friend, look upon the vast expanse of mountain crags marching crest on crest, an ocean's waves carved in stone by ice and snow, and mend your finite self as they lend their strength. Unmitigated power, condescending, begs you stride the alpen tundra with little legs ever too short no matter their length; test your mettle, seek and find a sanity absconded from the world of fragile minds that hide in light and do not know their vanity. Tread Hellroaring, know but wind and silence; trade pride of soul for spirit-driven wind and know the small expanse: your humanity. II. To embrace and know the small is your quickening; grasp as a babe for wanted, needed food, find yourself a child where a man once stood. Summit on summit, the mind reaches for infinity and shadow dreams of future hope that we can't hope alone, no matter that we should, while faltering creations we hold as highest good and deny we are the great obscenity. Can we hope, against hope, that rarefaction inspire, That breath taken may yet give life to soul? Can any hope abide when suffering's cries reverberate within that soul like thunder on Hellroaring and return the echo of evil's howl? Will not a sane man demand the how and why? For III. Death is howling, allied Hell in outrage roars, reaping, seething, flying high its ensigns, primed for battle with its angels, men and engines; its banners furl and snap, in crimson soar high above its ramparts slick with gore where pitchmen ply all their trenchant wit and wiles, trade in grand pretensions, hawking like wares the brutalities of war. But our metaphor is not of futility, of anguish: the Lion of Judah, red in claw and tooth, by freedom, hope, and truth alluring each combatant: He loves, to thereby vanquish, and with claws yet buried deep in the corpse of Death, He stands in the gaping maw of Hell, roaring.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.