We All Live in the Mountains

We All Live in the Mountains

(“But many who are first will be last. And the last will be first.” Mark 10:31)

We all live in the mountains,
we all live in the valleys,
we all live by surging streams,
we might live in yellow submarines;

We all sit in the same sun,
we all watch the river run,
we all stand in the deep sand,
we all buy the same name brand.

If you think that’s silly,
imagine anyone ruling from the ground up or
the sun down.
Imagine anyone commanding from situation rooms or
abandoned tombs.

We all flunked the test,
we all passed the rest,
we hoped to do our best,
we all only guessed
at the good that kings and queens could do
when so few lived where flowers perfumed the vale,
so many gave wrong numbers, so many lives were for sale.

We are all poets,
we are all painters,
we are all dancers,
and we cannot wait for
the show to begin.

If you think that’s dizzy,
imagine watching from the last row, imagine
waiting from the outskirts of town,
imagine excusing the harshest blows, imagine
kneeling before the circus clowns.

Suddenly a world that cannot turn
upside down when nothing is over and nothing
is under,
nothing will ever be split asunder;
can you imagine, will you wonder,
that our puny vowels mean much when
all the world is aching for the touch of anyone
with an ounce of breath to
step out of time,
to step into the sublime moments
when metronome beats are suspended,
inviolable rules upended,
and caution is thrown to the wind.