The Living Mountain – Nan Shepherd
The
view
from here
to the mountain –
the mountain
tremendous
bald.
In
command
Shehy mountain
dispenses the weather.
Wetting winds come off it
like uilleann pipes
in high-pitched
skirling
notes.
I
stand
next to
a stone row.
It stands venerable, marking time.
It stands, the stones aligned with cosmic midwinter.
Shehy stands the counterpoint to
my insistent self –
all our
insistent
selves –
all
our
brief candles.
The mountain summons,
beckons me to its presence
where timely it makes of time a sacrament,
offers me a holy reminder
I am momentary,
a walk-on
actor
only.
My
part
I feel
is to be
present with the softening lichens
that curve round the contours of weathered stone;
present with the low heathers,
their papery bellflowers
purpling the
hillside
slopes;
to
be
present in
the scent cast
by gorse in yellow light
in which flying insects look like dazzling sparks
rising from a burning bush.
In high winds
blackthorns bow,
birches
bend.
I
shall
learn from
them and from
the alder along the riverbanks
threading the rain's safe return to the sea.
The river-run is downwards and
headlong to reunion,
to time's
life-line –
renewal.
I
today
found myself
by losing myself
knee-deep in bog cotton grasses
a level sea gleaming in a mountain hollow.
The mountain was ever before
and will be
when none
will
be...
...when
none
will be
to witness it.
