Climbing The Mountain In The Picture
Expectations released into the atmosphere, gone.
Completely invisible now.
No more, “I have to”,
Just, “what ever will be, will be”.
Maybe I will win, complete the race, reach the top!
Maybe I won’t.
Now I don’t, “have to” anymore,
I feel less frantic.
I can just relax and get on with what’s in front of me,
In my own time.
I look up at another 200m climb to the top of the mountain in front of me,
whilst forgetting why I’m up here.
One tremendous step after another brings me closer to the goal.
I’m exhausted, I ask the mountain for support.
It’s alive! and moving very, very slowly on a collision course,
crashing at the speed of about one inch per year.
I see a wild goat and wild flowers,
when I reach the top.
What a surprise,
I reached the top!
I didn’t really expect that at all.
Hauling my rather ample frame 2910m above sea level.
What a hike, uphill struggle.
Why did I do that?
Why do other people bother to climb mountains?
Surely not just for the view?
Which is spectacular.
I ask the mountain to show me a gentle way down,
After one of those superb, well deserved cups of tea,
at the top of course.
Pathways reveal themselves to me,
as I scramble down the scree.
I breathe in deeply, right down to the bottom of my lungs,
The cleanest, freshest air, I have ever felt touch me.
I stop and look at everything on the way down.
Will the fairies come back to play in the fairy ring they left behind?
I see one tree with a bow around another,
like an old, married couples dieing pact.
To be reincarnated, together again, as two trees.
I walk and climb down.
The descent is never ending.
The snow melt causes deep running streams,
I follow them down.
Does the mountain need to be climbed?
Does it get tickled when we clamber all over it?
I anxiously anticipate the next turn of the bend in the track,
to reveal the final home straight.
To reveal at least the car park.
It never comes.
My muscles tired and my feet aching
On and on, I climb down.
It is so far,
There and back again.
I’ve never been so high,
Whilst having my feet firmly set on the ground.
The next day.
I look up to where I was and think to myself,
“How on earth did I reach the top of that huge mountain?”
Now I know what it is to be down here looking up and
up there looking down from the peak in this picture!
11th June 2009
Tags: mountain walk, poem