Poem: "Mountains and Plains"
This poem came out of the June 1, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from marina_bonomi. It was sponsored out of the general donation fund, selected by the audience in a recent poll.
Mountains and Plains
Mountains and plains
handle the vast expanse of wilderness in different ways,
but they are both expressions of wide open space.
Mountains are plains made vertical,
breaching the crenellations of the clouds,
cupping valleys in their rubbled hands.
Plains are mountains written small,
stretched low and wide to the horizon,
an infinity of rippling earth under waves of grass.
People of the mountains
stand tall, dwarfed by the peaks but unbowed,
clawing their way up the steep slopes to look down on eagles.
People of the plains
stand tall, swallowed by the shoreless prairie but undaunted,
eyeing the eagles high above and dreaming of distant flight.
Over them both
extends the same dome,
the sky's blue bowl chipped with beckoning stars.