This poem first suggested itself to me while looking at the magnificent mountain scenery of Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland. Beautifully dangerous!

 

A Mountain Cameo

Silvered by many alpine peaks, an orange sun

reflects, glass-like, off still dawn meltwaters,

a fireball inside a snow-white aural gleam

thrown carelessly into a child's rockpool.

Streaming no ripples, it fires mind-glowed

shining into the watery eyes of old men

walking, sleepy as spies, along a mountain shoreline

 

on cool spring mornings. Their elders

peer across a sheet of liquid steel, recollecting

ancient angers, loves and other comedies

that could have been; the distant snowy heights

mere brittle harbour for secular reliquaries,

their agonies mocked by the devil's breath.

 

Silent angels gather in the cols and icefalls

of these perfect mountains: earthen and

supernatural and jagged with intent; howling

their windstorm might, they engulf

the heavenly being of God's messengers,

hurling defiance down soundless valleys

towards unhurried remembrance.

 

Chris Hubbard

Perth, WA

2016