And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain

I have traveled a bit and have, wonderfully, a little mental cabinet of moments; they lie like orbs in the dark until I take them out into my mind’s light. One such is evoked by this poem by Lola Ridge. I had arrived after a journey to a hotel on the edge of things in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland. Spread out in front of my balcony were mountains that seemed so close I could reach out and stroke them like a beast. But a deep valley flew between me and the mountains, and up from its depth breezes came, and from around the mountains mists, and I spent a long time watching the show, and felt I could watch forever, or that forever itself was in front of me, and I was the brief show. The Edge Lola Ridge I. I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me…But there was time…And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain staring into the abyss. I do not know how long…I could not count the hours, they ran so fast–Like little bare-foot urchins–shaking my hands…