Only the mountain
can never diminish
with time or with distance,
housing the spirits
of those who once lived
in its aura, recognised
as its kin.
A geomagnetic
child of the mountain,
I watch it in cloudshadow
indigo-browed,
somehow connected by energies
that come from beyond and within.
My father's homing thoughts
at the end of his earthly span
returned to the mountain;
my mother composed a song
for the mountain-as-matriarch,
mountain-as-clan.
Alone yet serene,
the recumbent form
looms on the inner horizon
like fate, claiming a place
that dates from a pre-natal knowing
profounder than naming.