Mountains of the Mind

I used to think these hills were dead:

parched and sheep worn, grass barely clinging

to an undercarriage of moss, and the ponies

digging for foals in bottomless pools

of placid aether, where the peat bog

bubbles our carbon half life.

Stonedust leavens in clouds as I stamp my way,

and their hooves kick up peals of tumbled stones

in the crinkled haze of this effervescent dew—

there is a bleating on the wind, clouds

raking in the wool, another night

breaking into blue.

My heart thuds a marching tune,

sweat beads on the brow as it stings

and forces me to squint at the haloed sun,

now blinking away the remnants of this dream

—and suddenly I wake to the subsonic groan

of giants, buried under earth.

High amongst granite fins, Cwm Caseg

is shaded in sweeps of undulating glacial scars,

tracing the prisms of memory, as newly refracted hope

through my echoing mind. I remember the mountains

I left behind—the blood now clotted, but drawn:

the blade that cuts, in this rarified dawn.

I sometimes wish I could reach out, and gather

the verdant hills in folds of cloth—to wring

from them drops of nectar, on my serpent tongue.

But my hands are tied, and instead I am found

rattling down gullies and scree slopes, powered by

the beat of a burdened heart, to wander on two feet.

I have travelled here long, gotten lost even

and to know each bend and bud of cotton

on this sun wrinkled marsh has become

to know myself, and the mountains within:

where I learn to see that these precious hills

were always alive—I only had to be born

into them.

Deuris