The Valley Below
Location
Will it kill me? I wonder,
gazing up at my mountain,
whose jagged, torn dreams
spill down a gray fountain.
Bold stands this mountain,
gorged from the view
while I, toward the sky,
climb into the blue.
At night, rain falls silver
from a million white scars;
those jeweled-tears that drip
are the twinkling of stars.
My star-dreams shiver
as I reach toward their shimmer,
so fragile they crack
like a shattered glass mirror.
In day, while I climb toward the meaning
of Life,
the wind stabs my eyes
with its colorless knife.
Bleeding, I turn from my
mountain's cruel guile
and look down below toward
a shaded green isle.
Here in the valley
is not barren black stone
nor blinding white sun
nor my hard mountain throne.
But miracles! They sooth,
sway, slip with ease
a beauty, soft colored,
that hums in the breeze.
From the whispering forest
a deer towards me glides.
To my world-weary soul,
speaks her marble-black eyes:
"The mountain forgets
in its powerful scorn
that from this valley
it too was born."
The deer leaves me pondering in
the quivers of twilight,
the moon wrinkling clouds
with her sighs from the skylight.
My mountain, muses I
breathing deep the green air,
watching dusk soften
the sun's gold prayer.
There stands my mountain
where the stars seem to weep
and the valley below is a pool,
rich, and deep.
There stands my mountain,
its pride burnt aglow;
But I'd rather be here
In the valley below.