For What is There and What Isn’t
Sometimes the mountain you climb
is the one you carry inside—
a weight, a sorrow, a hope,
a heaviness with each footfall.
I find myself on a path
soft with red pine needles
twisting along a narrow pond.
All is calm and still,
cattails swaying in the slight breeze,
winter’s grey giving way to green.
If someone told me that this cove
was the entrance to heaven
I would believe them.
The swans with their arched necks
swimming slowly as sentries
in front of the tall grass.
Like heaven, it is so quiet
until your ears adjust—
and then you hear the music—
a cardinal singing high and clear,
the red wing blackbird shrills,
the goldfinches flicker from branch
to branch to the surface of the water.
Sometimes the mountain you climb
carries you home.
Last week the Ramapos and the Catskills,
the Adirondacks and the Berkshires
bore me with such kindness and patience
guiding me home until they gently
set me down in the valley.
Mountains can give us sight:
upward, outward, inward—
and anyway,
they all hurt my heart.
My feet are tired and
the cove is long and deep.
Beyond the tall grass
is a tangle of trees and bramble
and I can’t see where it ends.
And it is hard to tell in this
afternoon light whether the cove
is the entrance to heaven
or heaven itself.
Whether the longing I carry in my heart
is for what is there,
or what isn’t.
© 2025 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD