-- Those Distant Mountains --

John Herlihy

From the distance

I see the mountains

In all their glory

Surge up from the valley

That lay peacefully at their feet

This majestic vision

Fills the vision of my eyes

As sleeping behemoths

In their eternal repose

A race of giants from ancient days

In their magisterial splendor

Ancient, boundless, and prehistoric

Distance adds enchantment to the view

Drawing hearts into their embrace

On its sweeping slope a familiar face

When the soul of a person

Meets the soul of a mountain

A sacred encounter unfolds

A moment in time an eternal moment

Touched by the grace of its sublimity

How earth may pierce unto the heavens

The icy halls at its summit take their leave

Their boundless spirit leave mankind below

To gather in reverence with musing eye

Stirring a vain desire to reach its pinnacle

Altered now the idea of earthly space

The mind stretched thin beyond its limits

My imagination these highlands never fit

The precipices and cliffs utter poetic verses

Only the wind briefly invades the silence

To stand on the mountain peak robed in light

To breathe in the fresh air of heaven’s halls

To bask in the midnight blue of heaven’s sky

To witness below the carpeted sweep of the earth

To gaze upon the horizon and what lies beyond

Once there, lost amid the swirl of mystical mist

Towering over earth, treading unreachable skies

To keep on climbing that mountain beyond our reach

Ever seeking, ever yearning for that highest peak

That one final achievement to open our eyes

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Copyright © John Herlihy

Wednesday 1 December 2021