NaPowrimo Day 7

 

Day 7 - contradicting proverbs


 "mountain never meets a mountain but a man meets a man"  -scottish proverb


The hills

 

Man can meet man,

woman, woman or any such,

but they say mountain does not meet mountain.

 

Yet, earliest in the half dawn, by the cuillins,

I heard them first; unanchoring and pulling loose their ropes,

the ballast dragged behind them, leaving scree, rough jewels.

 

The turf and the peat loosened and curled, the ground untangled

of its white tree roots, the landscape riding on the coat tails of lovers

as they moved their dance.

 

And in the full of day, the ordinance survey wept

to see the landscape so redrawn, a battlefield

of mass and emptiness, the fingerprints removed.

 

If we love at all, it is like mountain meeting mountain -

all cordillera linked, yet, all lonely summit.

I’ll meet you where the sheer faces clash,

 

where the stone is red and soft,

where the wind will know us by the names we take,

and the ground we gather to us.

 


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