mountain

heavy on me snow the thick thoughts
freighting more the hard-packed doctrine on my breast
lain unmelting since my youth.

the clouds encircle.
i weep my convex glaciers in groans and crashes and silence.
slow and unreversing they slip the long slope away from me
and going gouge base-rock, score and scar,
till remnants of tears dry leaving
fragments various at my feet.

i never asked for original snow
but being given why oppressed in ice and lumps
snows and countersnows
strange climactic frenzy.

too high, say the clouds.
a mountain should not be too high
if he will not counter all the storms
till they wear his stature equal to adjacent hills.

krm