The Mountain on Your Right

                                      

                                                    Around the sandflat bay, tide out

                                                    Raised beds a-crackle and pop in the new sun's weight

                                                    Fiddling crabs make sandball radiances

                                                    And sign, claws up, claws down—up down

                                                    Such summery pastimes

 

                                                    Crabs fill their bubbly mouths, fiddly twitter

                                                    Darting black fishies jump their panic

                                                    Over hot wavelets

                                                    Coursing by the mudskipper’s tail-lugged gape

                                                    In blithe trampers trampfoot print

 

                                                    The moon’s mass drag, look way down

                                                    Corals do appear, rock blue and life green

                                                    The jeweler’s shop unlocked

                                                    Sea skaters nip before a shadow

                                                    The long path beckons resumption

 

                                                    And there it is, eternally there,

                                                    Monolith

                                                    Seat of all woes, a navel vision dragged ever

                                                    Feet may fall on boulder paths or forest edge;

                                                    Conceal-less, peer-less, it dominates regard-less

 

                                                    Beached sat in attention consummation

                                                    The mountain on your right

                                                    Is forever within, the dark hold deep solid

                                                    Crabwork and fishleap are not to sway

                                                    Nor the pretty things nor ministrations of exercise

 

                                                    It must be left…

 

 

                                                    Climbing on the turn

                                                    The path will make

                                                    The back—to face its cognition

                                                    The path will take

                                                    The footsore on—into wild glades free

                                                    The path will wake

                                                    New sites—new bravery

                                                    The mountain is still there

                                                    But

                                                    Is no longer in sight