The Winter Slopes. 

    Back beyond the utmost ridge,
     back behind this alien mountain,
      burns a tempting sun;
       illuminating memories now,
        of rising climbs with brazen peaks
         to magnificent crags with pinnacles like time-stopped flame.
      But get this!
    Ambition's fire won't cease once it burns alone!
     It snarls through fulfilled
      well-fed dreams
       to starve,
      dying on dead peaks.
    And now the winds lash at me,
     high and lost,
      searching pastward swift and shrill
       on a mountain spurned for it's crass defiance of change.
    The crags screech, soaring, leaning,
     and drop low to clouds that flicker and crash:
      storms rolling wild with the unmade future.
       And there is no past, there is only now; and it's cold.
      And the winds will search forever.
    I will climb down.
    A crust of dream ash cooling on the winter slopes,
     threatening avalanche at every step,
      splinters underfoot.
    My thoughts fail, weary and numbed,
     And I trudge to earth feeling heavy and glum
      till my loss, and the cold, are gone with the shadow of the mountain.
    Then I re-awake;
     and I see a world of hills and vales,
      of clouds and light and storms and stars,
       and I'm in it with others;
    and some of them know that phantom mountain.


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                                 TIME

                            Future is wish.
                   The past lurks: a haunting shade;
                     yet now, with change, we live.