Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I need this to be a good day. Mountains
are such a part of me that I hang on whether
days among them will be something similar for you.

Dead grasses and woody heather stalks
catch at our legs as we begin the climb before
a zigzag stalkers’ path, skilfully graded, eases the way.

Swathes of snow soon become the norm. We look
for the others on a far ridge. No sign.
Our searching is overridden by a more immediate focus,

engaging with the hill, kicking steps into firm
white banks, watching light burst, clouds swirl,
pearl and grey ranges hazing away to distance.

I stop for photos at Sgurr Coire nan Eirichallach.
Breath stills. Everything close is etched brightly.
Days like this are so rare, you could wait years.

Snow’s hard shapes carve into the slopes. A hundred
mountains are sharp. Nevis, clear for once, shows
its vast curve, a pale whale prowling the horizon.

Since my pausing you are ahead, using crampons
for the first time, your confidence quite natural.
When I finally reach you, beyond awkward icy slabs,

you spill the story of your encounter with a ptarmigan.
The telling shines from your eyes in the bright air.
Our crampons chomp and squeak across packed snow,

just left of the cornices, across the ice-bound pebbles
of Arctic ground, to the cairn, to chocolate and tea.
Scotland stretches away. Eigg is peeking between hills.

There’s Ladhar Bheinn, the high rock crown of Knoydart.
That serrated toothline far to the west is the Cuillin.
To the east a glacial trowel has scooped Glen Quoich.

We are both full of it, looking endlessly from your
first winter mountain. Sharing hot liquid we turn
to each other and you catch me grinning like an idiot.