A Poem: Reflections at Mt Cook

I once wrote that everything
was thank you.
That is not all.
Everything above is as below.
Everything is, in traces,
and at times in your face
fully obvious,
utterly completely transparent.

Everything is undone in the way
the sun sparkles on water,
reflects off snow.
In the way there are few colours
but blue and white,
green and brown.
Lake, mountain, snow.

I once noticed everything said
thank you.

Here though,
everything is explanatory.
No need for thank you.
This is the pinnacle,
which in the end is entirely simple.
It is not creation saying thank you,
so much as creation’s revelation here
we are thankful for.

We leave knowing
we have encountered the brink—
which hardly knows,
in a terrain of rockfall and ice,
open plains,
that we, small dots,
made landfall.

And that is how we leave it.
Unmoved and ever existent
despite us.
Everything is thank you,
yes,
and nothing less.

But everything is also as it is.
And it is we,
impermanent in ourselves,
wending our way back,
making our afternoon shadows
on the hills,

becoming smaller and smaller,
as sediment in a mountain stream,
or stones on a valley floor,
who say thank you.

This is the silence that speaks
so very little,
only insects are heard.
And what is thank you in the end,
but an acknowledgment of our smallness
in the face of everything.
It’s vastness, the very mirror
keeping us from our own self-importance.

The mountain hardly knows
its rocks which fall
as stars through the eons.
The stardust, which is our true heritage,
is the same as the rock
that claims it is still mountain.

But still looks up,
aware of it being so miniscule
in the face of its forebears.

Yes, so much in need of thank you
are we,
here, so small,
where the mountain peaks
reach heaven.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
April 2022

Audio: Beethoven, L. V., Vessella’S Italian Band, Stark, R. & Gwentzel, G. (1914) Moonlight sonata: First movement