Lessons of The Land

Do you visit the high plateaus
Merely to hide away
Or have you come to the mountains
To hear what they have to say?
For the mountains sing of a time
When the Earth was young and green;
Many’s the sunset and moonrise
These aged crags have seen.
These foothills stood before the pyramids
And before the sea-swell rolled
Where now there’s naught but desert
Or so I have been told.
Imagine the drama and fury
These windswept heights have observed
There’s lessons here a million
As surely as space is curved.

Torn by the teeth of great glaciers
Scoured by wind and by rain
One day the peaks will be laid low
But others will rise again.
Volcanoes and fire and chaos
Ash raining down on the plain
Whole forests buried in lava
But still the beauty remains.

Deep secrets are hid on the summits
Enfolded in layers of time
And the silence there is profound enough
To inspire a poet to rhyme.

Though this land is both wild and savage
And her moods unpredictably strange
There is much for the savant and wizard
To learn from the canyon and range.
So come to the mountains to listen
To look, to seek, and to find
The unbounded knowledge this country
Can offer the questioning mind.