Monday, June 2, 2008

Gold Mountain

Copyright 2008

Along the tree strewn ridge on a sparkling fall day
the light glistens on the rocks and the cool breeze
ruffles my hair as I stride the wonderland that is the Blue Ridge.
Now and again I catch a glimpse of distant valleys
bejeweled with lakes, golden in the afternoon sunlight,
beyond them distant ridges of hazy blue which melt into the sky
thirty miles distant.

It is a time and place of revelation,
when the clock means naught and time is held suspended
like a thought in a tired mind at days end,
while I walk these ridges in the warmth of gratitude
and hope in the future of a troubled earth.

It would not be hopeless were Nature in charge
and man but a player in the cosmic game.
But taking to himself the fate of the globe
smashing and staining, his hands drip with
blood drawn from mother earth.

I wonder as I hike these ancient hills
if even they will escape that day of reckoning
when mountains smoke and
oceans boil like cauldrons.

I wonder if man will somehow open his jaded eyes
and see.

But then, across the valley there, a hawk glides
on thermals that carry her high on the dusky wings
of this blessed day and I smile
because hope will not go easy.

3 comments:

Janet Grace Riehl said...

Barry...this is so beautiful and really catches the transcendence of that kind of day...so hard to do in words.

Janet Riehl
www.riehlife.com

Unknown said...

Well...this is one of the prettiest pieces of writing I've read in a long time. My kind of reading. Beautiful words and phrases and description, Barry Yelton. Good job.

Pee Wee(Sylvia Hamilton)
http://willow-walk.tripod.com

Barry Yelton said...

Thank you for the kind words, Pee
Wee.