Perhaps the mountains show the strength
I keep so well hidden, but I think of
skyscrapers, when I’m lost, and dream of little
boys I knew, before the mountains crumbled.
Can you tell me how many pots of gold to search for
before I realise I am entirely sure the rainbow is just strips of light
that mean only one short moment of delight
before despair sets in again?
You can tell me nothing, because I am nobody to you.
Yet once I made the rainbow for you, and when it rained
I kept you dry.
I don’t know where your heart beats now, or who it beats for.
You don’t know who I cry for, because you do not know yourself.
You never did.
The sounds around you lent you someone I could not recognise.
The skyscrapers were ours no more,
and our hearts beat in different hills.
Now I know you never could have shared those mountains,
that they were mine alone.
I have tried to climb,
but my legs have turned so weary.
I wonder, can I keep on climbing?
Even walking this new path has me dried up, my turn has gone.
Now I must stand still.
Perhaps the stillness will be my companion.
It is loneliness I never imagined the mountains would allow.
I dream of being back, when they were friends.
But dreams are not rainbows, because they hold no magic.
I must now find solace in solidity.
I must realise cold hard earth has beauty , too.
And I must carve it into something small, but real.
The mountains have crumbled, the skyscrapers are dust,
I have only this, this cold red clay, and when it rains,
I will shelter alone.
Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash
