Up Into the Mountain

Country Western music played on the van radio. The driver appeared to be a teenager. A little boy hung out the front side doorway, the door removed, as we made our way up the mountain. 

Upon thy slopes, Thy majesty was met

By naught but wind, and cosmic dust that swirled,

A silent sovereign of an unformed world.

From Gaia’s womb, an Ourea old and vast,

With judgment etched, a presence meant to last,

As Pan on Arcadian heights didst pipe of yore,

Or Sanshin ancient, robed in white, before

His tiger, or as Latobius adored

By Celts on crags where storm-clouds poured,

Thy brooding presence is the silent Lord.

Springs from the awe thy very form does breed;

A human instinct, when confronted by

Such power that re-shapes the earth and sky,

To find a spirit, sentient and grand,

A force to supplicate, to understand.

Of nature’s power, “awe-inspiring, vivifying, destructive” scene.

Its might reflecting the “operation of the mind” ,

A truth that Burke and Kant sought to define:

The grand, the “terror,” “vastness,” “obscurity” ,

That which “exceeds human comprehension,” wild and free.

With peril. Hear the poet’s struggling breath:

“The path is winding, and the climb is steep…

Challenging at times, with obstacles to defeat”.

Another cries, “I feel the bite of cold air on my face…

Thus art Thou, Mountain, the great equalizer grim,

Then solitude descends, a crushing weight,

Or liberation, altering one’s fate.

Wordsworth, with “dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being,” recompense

For stolen moments, “huge and mighty forms”

Thy will, O Mountain, turning them instead.

The pilgrims of the West, through “desolate” peaks ,

Where “ferocious beasts and demons” hunger speaks,

A journey of “atonement” through thy stony aisles.

A modern Prometheus, whose soul did speak

Yet Shepherd sought no peak, but to be “with the mountain

As one visits a friend,” a flowing fountain

Of quiet communion, where the self might fade,

“Walking the flesh transparent,” unafraid,

A paradox of merging, yet alone.

Here, where the earth ascends to meet the sky,

The veil is thin, and deities draw nigh.

The Law delivered, etched on sacred stone,

Dante, on Purgatory’s slope, did slowly climb ,

Zarathustra, after ten years’ silent thought

The vision fades, the climber must descend,

But thy deep imprint knows no earthly end.

For those attuned. The call is ever new,

A metaphor for life, for art’s slow, painful birth,

This cycle of ascent, and then return to earth.

Here souls may “touch the stars,” or face the dread

Of “dark Satanic Mills” where hope lies dead,

Yet still, O Sovereign, mystery remains,

As ever, draws us to thy sacred heart,

A timeless call to play our fleeting part.