Mountain of Love

The fine silt of a crumbled, eroded mountain

and the ashen, kaolin remains of my mother

drift in the river the way a lace, sheer curtain

whispers in the open window of a funeral chamber.

A mother is the mountain in a young man’s world.

Yet, our boyish selves mature to love the great plains

our mountain becomes; we mourn her water tolled

transformation knowing that the sanded, selfless pains

of the risen earth, now worn away, is the soil of our life.

She was my Everest, a heaven bound, snowy peak

who raised me above the world, free from strife,

and then planted me with sunny love and kisses on the cheek.

The river holds her nurturing remains and ever as I grow

it’s the young mountain I very much want to know.