My Mountains

How often you have succored me,
Grey ranges,
Obscuring mist,
Oaks, pines, beeches
All thick with wooden silence.
I have run to you,
Crouching among your twigs,
Dead leaves and needles.
I have vomited my terrors
Into your sedate ridges and folds
And lain spent in the crook
Of your valleys
Covered in a cloaking fog.

There I breathed and healed
And you said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
You whistled your winds.
You scraped your cold branches.
You rained me with fine mist
And rime frost, and though
You never said it,
I was one of you.

These thirty years
I have turned to you
For the balm of poetry.
Waiting for it to whelm up
As a bubbling spring
On a green cut of underbrush.
Thirsty for you, I come,
And look at you
And remember your kindness,
And the words dribble out,
Wetting my eyes again.

(poetry and photographs copyrighted by the author)