We’re in week 4 out 5 of National Poetry Month, which means it’s time to share another poem. This one, “The Mountains Do Not Call Me,” won second place in the Wyopoets Award and was subsequently published in Encore 2018, the prize anthology of The National Federation of State Poetry Societies. (Last week’s poem was published in this same volume, along with a third poem of mine, so you’ll get a three-for if you want to order yourself a copy–not to mention great poems by many other poets!)
In reading it now, my first thought was that I’d pay a lot of money to be in the mountains again right now. Then I realized that’s exactly how I would get to the mountains right now, and that, unfortunately, reality doesn’t always match up with brain declarations. 😉 Ah, well, at least I can read this poem (and look at this picture my husband took) and go back there. I hope it brings you something good too.
The Mountains Do Not Call Me
It breaks my poet’s heart to say it,
but the mountains do not call me.
I see that here, now, as I look,
praise, salute. “Hello again, you.
My soul’s been waiting,”
and they do not answer.
That’s when I see
that a poet’s tendency
to romanticize is a weapon–
no, scratch that–a veil
obfuscating the truth.
What makes the mountains
the mountains is that they do not call.
They do not sing or bow or dance.
They do not breathe,
indeed, they do not even wait.
The deeper truth is that the mountains
are,
and there is my lesson,
impersonal, stalwart, deep and high
and brave–no, not brave–there I go again–
true.
The mountains do not call me;
I am called to them
and in their shadows
I can be
a thing that calls and dances
and breathes and waits
and tries to learn.
In their presence
I can be.
© Annie Neugebauer, 2016
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