I walk out my door
and look straight across at mountains
jutting behind the houses over the road.
Really, they loom
on the other side of our town, and beyond
paddocks and canefields, trees and river.
But this hill I’m on,
up the top here, takes my sight leaping
past the valley to the craggy range
(the Border Ranges)
filling the width of my vision, which rises
to encompass also the height of the sky.
‘The bright of the sky’
my hand types, and I nearly keep that.
At present it’s clear, cold winter-bright.
The mountain edge
is sharp, as if carved with a knife.
Below is a row of trees topping the hill.
Somewhere else
the globe is warming, ice caps melt,
the ocean is filling with plastic.
Some other time,
not now, the rivers fill too full
drowning the land; or forests burn.
For a moment I forget
the horrors of wars, starvation, pestilence.
They will return too soon. Meanwhile
I open my door.
I gaze at the mountains opposite, deepest blue.
(I dribble a little, being old. It doesn’t matter.)
Written for Poetics: A View of One's Own, at dVerse.