Mountain Song – published in Aesthetica, Issue 13

We did not climb the mountain.

While the sun shone

I wanted you to see

What was important to me:

A riot of blue stars in spiked grass

The frowning sand, fat gold rolls of it

The water that showed us, clear as glass

Toes among stones

But was dark as cut agate

Where the waves sliced it.

And you saw. You understood.

Like the good

Man I knew you to be:

You walked on the edge of my world

And did not step on a flower,

Or laugh at a rock

(The sea-cut granite, fallen from the head of the cliff

Like a ponderous thought).

And while the mountain that was you

With your 360 degree view

Stood on the edge of my mind

Like a reproach –

I made you walk by the sea,

Made you walk in the valley of me.

And now I pray for another sunny day –

But the mountain stands shrouded, clouded, grey.

About Pedalling Poetry

Writer Ellen McAteer is founder of Tell It Slant poetry bookshop in Glasgow, and Publishing Manager for the Poetry Translation Centre. She was General Manager at Poetry London magazine, a visiting lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art, and a mentee of the Clydebuilt Verse Apprenticeship Scheme, under Alexander Hutchison, as well as a singer with the band Stone Tape and a solo singer who won a BBC Radio competition with her song Blue Valentine. She was Director of the Poetry Trust, which ran the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, a director of the Scottish Writers’ Centre, a visiting lecturer at Oxford University's MSt in creative writing, and a member of the core group of performers at the Hammer and Tongue spoken word collective in Oxford. She is a qualified Librarian.

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