National Poetry month, V. 7.0, Day 22

Well, here are again!  I was given a challenge for yesterday, but by the time I was given this challenge, I'd already written yesterday's poem, so I'm taking this theme into today.  Mountains.  Great imagery is available here, and it can be treated in a lot of different ways, to be sure.  Mountains are a common element in my preferred genre literature: Epic High Fantasy.  Why?  Lots of reasons:  things can be hidden in mountains, or lost there, mountains are natural barriers, they're scary and foreboding for many folks, "the gods" live there - these are just a few of the reasons, and there are always more, but mostly, I think, mountains are used a lot in all kinds of writing because they represent struggle to climb the mountain, to make it over the challenge - whatever that challenge will be.  A professor once gave me some really good advice when I was complaining about a class:  "Don't die on the side of the mountain."  She meant, of course, to keep going, don't give up, never back down, and to conquer the obstacle - in this case, a class.  It was some of the best advice I've ever been given.  But there was only one thing that went through my mind, and, from the film versions of Lord of the Rings, I thought, "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf!  Mountains!" - Bilbo Baggins, Fellowship of the Ring.  And there is where today's poem begins....

Thanks for reading,

Me

i want to see mountains again

i want to see mountains again,
to look upon their heights and feel small,
and run my hands along the seams of rock,
flesh meets granite, limestone, and earth.

i need to travel the hidden paths,
up ways that only the wild goats can find,
skip-jumping from precipice to boulder,
careful and careless at the same time.

i must be atop them,
to view the world from the underside of clouds,
and see as the falcon does -
the world in its magnificence.

it is the conquest of self -
man, made from the mountain
he seeks to conquer,
only to know himself.
i say i want to see mountains again,
but what i really want is to find out 
what the mountain will make of me.