Away With Worry: On Climbing Great Gable
...At noon I lay upon the mountains
Horror of ridge and ledge
Battered by the rhythm of the storm and
Swooning at the chasm's edge...
Angela Black’s poem brings a sense of the wonder and the fear engendered by walking on challenging mountains.
'In the morning I walked upon the mountains
Mountains splashed with gold
Rejoicing in the rhythm of the mountains
Flowing fold on fold
Murmuring of hidden valleys
Crescendo of the striving hills
Breaking to the crest - ecstatic summit -
Diminuendo of dissolving rills
I lulled to the lapping of the waters
Secreted in the hollow crags
Piping of the thin shrill sea wind
Fingering the slender flags.
At noon I lay upon the mountains
Horror of ridge and ledge
Battered by the rhythm of the storm and
Swooning at the chasm's edge
Booming of the rising rivers
Jostling of the jagged peaks
crashing to the crest - sheer summit -
The gale's disintegrating shrieks
Swirling of the flooding waters
Swollen by the stinging salt wind
Sweeping up the valleys from the plain
In the evening I look upon the mountains
From the garden secluded in the plain
Fashion the clay with rythmic fingers
Reproducing the ecstasy and pain
Defining refining remembering
Crescendo of the jostling hills
crashing to the crest - ecstatic summit -
Diminuendo of dissolving rills
Sparrows in the thatch are sleeping
But over the furnace - once again
I swoon at the edge of the chasm
Lashed by the rhythm of the rain.
