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.
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