Certainty

Somewhere slipped into the years of past and present
Found between the pages of an unfinished book -
There is no way
No way to tell
Where
I found myself when I was young -
I was new then
Sitting softly on a rock alone
Beside a stream, beneath a mountain,
Behind the future.

The stream was clear, rock purified,
Unpolluted and ice clean,
Its coldness burnt my hand and stung my face -
And the jagged mountains made my goals,
Tall and firm and pointing,
Ashen and dignified,
They were the moment I called now,
Etched surely, certain to my searching eyes.

And then I lived again -
But what is that?
I learned to question truth,
And later when I sat upon the rock again
Beside the stream, beneath the mountain,
Now in future,
I found the stream was filled with bits of dirt
Not seen years before -
Had I been so wise then?

I saw the mountain blunted,
Gray with dusk and wrapped with fog,
And I could not discern
The mountain from the clouds.

­ Sally Clay
1959

 

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