the mountain as presented
seemed not risky, but inviting.
the suggestion, ever tacit,
was that in scaling her peaks,
you might find the way to heaven.

or so your father thought before you,
therefore showing you the marvels of a dream.
yet you saw him often rising,
and then falling to the foot,
each time fearing that this plunge would be his last,
and that those depths might lead to death,
or even hell.

so you were ashamed for your father,
and you denied even the God
he sought in such futility to follow
and you made your way without him
as you reasoned out a life for yourself
and for many fragile men
in whom you found the remains
of his image.

your father called this failure,
and that thought he could not face.
so he found hidden shadows of your figure
in the voices of surrogate daughters,
who became as his princesses
in the world of his successes,
where his image shined with radiance,
his crown fixed firmly on his head,
as they looked to him as to a king,
and they never beheld his shame.

oh echo of his folly,
how awfully he deluded you,
and how hardly could he face
the sheer horror of it all!
at the same time as deceiving you,
he fooled himself as well,
as he dwelt in the illusion
of the girls who had replaced you
and who were what he once had wished for you,
and what you might have once attained.

to those daughters then he turned,
yea, he clung to them like honey,
and he drank his fill of their respect,
and gave them all he had.
yea, he even gave the gift rejected
by the echo of his laughter,
in the person of the daughter
of his long-forsaken past,
while with irony uncanny,
he did write his name forever
on the mounts of the immortal,
where his torment would not linger
but his works would yet remain.

though her pinnacle were worldly,
still he scaled that looming mountain,
wishing boldly you might follow
when you saw him without shame,
when at last you would depart
from all the fools who took your substance
for to find your newfound father
in the reaches of his fame.

and the prize that you rejected
might be luminous in glory,
as the honors are accepted
on the evening of your pride,
that no longer should you follow
in the footsteps of the foolish,
but instead you might rejoin him
for to celebrate his dreams.

and your heart will be unhardened
for the love you will be given
in the day you stand together
on the mountain of his splendor
on the peaks of your decision,
and the gateway to rebirth,
thanking countless newfound sisters
on a mountaintop of gold.

Copyright © 2007 by Andy Pope

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