I cannot grasp Her power

Hurricane Sandy from satellite

Beneath us, quiet as it is, this power

links directly to my heart.

Fresh, cool, down in the layers,

the emerald, the sapphire:

the power of the mountains is with us, everywhere.

Today, as if posing for a portrait,

She is holding still, so still,

holding each branch forth with her immense grace,

available to us, almost shy.

The mountain, enshrouded today, is retreating in heavy fog,

head in the clouds, really.

She is seen, and She fades.  She is seen, and She fades.

As for me, I’m but a puppet, magnetized,

a whirling skater upon a mirror,

a slave to Her power.

Autumn and Winter, Spring and Summer,

pulling the Moon, and being pulled,

She turns so slowly, so beyond our ken,

each minute shift is an avalanche on Denali,

a hurricane in Cuba, a rock slide in Tennessee.

I cannot grasp Her power.

Now and then, a turn in the path, a change in the weather,

and I glimpse the mountain’s power, the ageless magnetism.

I feel Her pulling my eyelids down at night,

pinching me to leap for joy in the day...

but She is so far beyond me to know,

I am only here to witness, to glimpse and guess,

to be propelled through my life, a leaf on the wind,

at the mercy of Her grace.

Annelinde Metzner

Wildacres Retreat

October 29, 2009 

Grandfather Mountain in clouds