Take comfort in the mountains;
They have a song of their own.
Their heavy heights may seem too Weighted to reach sky
From footholds that are earthbound —
Hopelessly bound in earth.
But take comfort!
Even the shackled
Cannot be prison-souled!
Writing of mountains makes me weep sometimes;
My heart cries, “Freedom!
Let them —
They want to touch
Infinity!”
But it seems, perhaps, they do —
But I have been too blind to see it.
Who am I to judge mountains
Or what they are capable of?
Sometimes they seem without future,
Straining upward as men in chains
Seek light.
Grappled downwards,
Decapitated by cloud.
Nothing could be more
Anchored than mountains.
More captive,
Less free to soar, to jig.
But there is movement in mountains,
Always, ever sun-toward.
Scattered wildflowers
Creep stealthy between hostile rocky teeth.
Pushing upward.
Treetops add to mountains’ skyward reach,
Sending the falcon and the hawk heavenward
From their mist-of-green branches.
The mountain is not stoic,
Nor resigned,
Nor fearful of what its tomorrows portend.
(Is ignorance bliss?)
It strives ever to
Wash its slopes in moonlight,
Resting in blanketing stars.
Storms rake it,
Blizzard’s confound,
Choking with strangling white arms –
Only white.
But the passionate colors of the mountain
Its yellows and blues, pinks and greens,
Its purples,
And yes, its blacks and browns,
Will always break free of the smothering white
And win through to the Spring.
This I believe.
This I know.
And so, I take comfort in the mountains;
They have a song of their own.
Ellen McDaniel-Weissler is a LaVale freelance writer whose column appears on alternate weekends.