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

I told them I would climb a mountain, I would discover the heights.
They laughed as I lay on it’s green slopes, my face damp on grass,
breathing the deep earth scents, the clay beneath the springing green,
fingers wriggling and clutching through to rich brown soil. Rising,
I strode across the lower slopes, coming to rocks and scree, clutching,
scattering the many various shaped and coloured pebbles, scratching,
my hands bleeding. Higher, clinging with broken nails, searching
for fragments of rock, outcroppings, fragments to cling to, the void
gaping beneath me, Gasping and struggling, I reached, lifted myself,
found some kind of plateau where I lay, sprawled and aching, the sky
moving above me, while I waited to know what it meant. Waiting
for the secrets of the mountain, but no words or vision came. Just a
great wondering at the swirling of the sky, and a need to rest.

After a while, I started the descent, I scrambled and slipped down
the rocks and boulders, clinging and clutching again, letting go,
descending in an untidy slide, falling, slipping, banging,
skimming down the scree, rolling over scub and bushes, finding
the softness of the grass, then the flat ground. A hard sunset,
bright and orange, hurting my aching dust filled eyes. Then
the curious faces, regarding me. ‘What did you discover?’
I could not speak, but then it came to me, ‘Power’ I said, ‘and beauty.’
Of course they had no idea what I was talking about. How could they?
They had not climbed the mountain.