Prelude to "Yr Wyddfa"

For Joel Thomas Martin, friend and stouthearted companion

I rise with the morning sun and it greets me
with young dawn's sky-full gift of audacity.
A gift gathered from the coasts, islands
and hills that surround my sleepy northern home.
And as I look to the south: a journey back in time
to learn what time really means.

For what is older than the oceans that could swallow whole
the nations that men kill for,
and the mountains that move in inches and whose age is million-year?

Even in the southerly distance these mountains lord over me,
though their right to dominion is only accorded
in virtue of the dust of which we are both composed—
the dust that gives breath to air, heat to fire and motion to sea.

So let us go, then, my Friend, and ascend that peak,
to trudge through the yester-night snow and face the primal fear upon the slopes;
to find those ancient tarns, where in one Caledfwlch rests
and across which perhaps the portal to Afallon awaits two intrepid enough to seek it out.

And, at the top of the world,
we shall gaze and marvel at the Dragon's land that has been here before us
and which will be here long after we are dust, air, fire and sea.

Poem XXXII
M.M. — Apr-, Dec-2012; Feb-2013