A Vanishing Friend

My childhood was not good. I would spend hours alone at a very young age, gazing at 'my' mountain. I imagined it was a huge friendly stone lion, that sat out there watching over me. I knew if I ran to it, it would come to life and protect me in its massive paws. Those thoughts and imaginations made life bearable - whatever happened, or however bad things were, I knew that as a last resort I could flee to my rock giant and be saved.

Once I was in was my teens, and clear of our commune, I explored every inch of that mountain. I loved ever crack and cranny. Being on it was like being alone with the father I never knew. Now, my heart is torn apart as I see it plundered, and explosive charges blast it apart: All to fulfil man's greed, and provide rocks for people to place in their gardens. And all this whilst I'm still a teenager. I feel helpless, frustrated, angry. It is like seeing a special friend carved up and eaten by cannibals…

A Vanishing Friend
(Mountain of My Youth.)

You were always there for me, oh
Recumbent mass of stoic pulchritude.
Raised over eons from earth’s crust.
Carved and scarred with Sphinx-like pride
By ice-age receding glaciers’ ride.
Ever commanding my latticed view.

Cool, dapple-dyed clouds – celestially curved,
Dip down - your granite visage to caress.
Well trod, much loved, oft captured in oil.
Dewey, demure, devoid of soil.
Lime-limbed lion, sometimes sombre, silent, solitary.
Leviathanic monster reflecting many moods.

Your broad brow envisioned now in sunlit gold,
Embraced the mist. Betimes black clouds,
Brewing, brooding, shrouding, spewed storm-floods.
Electric wildfire magic of Old Thor’s war. Theatrical,
Flashing, crashing, awesome to behold.
Thunderous, thrilling, tempestuous lion’s roar.

Cheekily cairn-capped, from days beyond reckoning.
Lyre-lure inviting landlocked siren. I, one of your slaves.
Your indefinable da Vinci smile silently
Beckoning me to traverse your clints, crags, or caves.
Those smiles promising, after climb or attaining quest,
A myriad windbreak bowers, aching limbs to rest.

A masterpiece of natural art. In Summer, feet adorned
In trailing garlands of swaying ‘Blue Mantle’.
Spawned rainbows, waxing, waning, archly smile,
Tarry briefly a rain-shower while.
At their foot ‘tis alleged hide crocks of gold.
Buried deep in potholes cold.

Deep within your bowels, I explored uncharted cave and pot.
Rippling streams, crystal clear. Winding, wandering, wetting.
Gangling, gurgling into blackness. Ever down – their lot.
Slithering in and out of cracks and crannies, ever fretting.
Then culminating in whooshing muffled throaty roar.
A cascading ejaculation searching for long sunk floor.

Sphinx-like you smile. An ageless resting sage.
Three hundred and thirty million years you have amassed.
Your plateau views are unsurpassed. I rage at your raping.
Gold-banded sandstone, millstone grit, assorted shale’s.
Lime-rock, limestone, slate. Exploiters always taking
To build roads, abbeys, houses, gardens. Comprehension fails.

Unsung, your praises. No Everest, but ever-loved.
Would I‘m not alone in seeking to save you from Man's ravaging.
TV, and garden magazines incite your rape and plunder.
And for what? To use your rocks to beautify their homes!
Oh Mystic Mountain of my youth,
These tears I shed for you.