Climbing Bengooria

Bengooria domed like a druid’s cap
Rising from bogs, peat 
Clinging almost to your rocky top
Bengooria once clothed in oaks
Ground by glaciers, haunted by
Wolves, diorite and granite,
White veins of quartz, like milk
Spilled along these stone steps
Where the tourists climb, 
All the nations of the world
Climbing Bengooria

Rest-stepping to the top
Dead-eyed Irishmen unsparing in their
Merciless assessment
Gaudy lycra-bound Americana 
Moving like a deer
Middle aged stumpers unused to their 
Medieval bellies
Climbing Bengooria

Soft land, hard bog spread out like
Map of a million million stones
Up and up I say to a stern man
As we stand aside to let his family pass
Up and up and it brings a half smile
Unexpected on the granite face
Disarmed perhaps by the
Western drawl
Climbing Bengooria

Two pretty young girls ridiculous
In their blooming, ungainly, coltish
Run after me to bring a lens cap
 That is not mine, chagrined
 We part as friends, I think
Of a few seconds, a few steps 
Out of the way
Selling their hard-earned elevation 
For courtesy

Bengooria though your head
Is not so high as your neighbors
You stand alone, aloof, visible
Even from the sea loch by the farm
While they lift their rounded lofty heads
Under the mist

Bengooria, I take a heavy rock
Blocking the trail, add it to the cairn
Of the summit add my labor to the history
Of Ireland, the stone I have come 
After all, to set upon ancestral longings.

Bengooria, from you crumbling crown
I look down on ancient glens,
Seas of heartache, passes of hunger
Unknown stones standing significant 
Standing heedless, standing regardless 
Of we mountaineers of the hour
Filing by

Climbing Bengooria
Are small children, dogs, out of condition
Office workers, fashionables fellows
Sneering at their smartphones
Deer-like the runner passes 
Her footfalls make no sound on the scree
While my boots creak out their toad trill
At every gravel crunching
Trudge; an anxious aging woman
Gabbling non-stop at the child
By her side – Nelly don’t go there come back
Not there Nelly come here Nelly
What are you doing Nelly
As she sprauchles unsteady up the trail
Glares at my smile, turns up her shoulder
In response, then disappears behind a  stone
Never seen again
My love is like a red red rose
The wind is singing in my ear
Soft, almost tropical
Climbing Bengooria

This is no epochal ascent, a simple
Test of failing strength, endurance
Of small physical discomforts, 
a feeling of temporal victory 
As we look back up at the summit block where 
We stood, resting in the bog below, 
A bone knife in my heel for every stone step
Then assuaged by apple pie and tea
In the visitor center café
After climbing Bengooria.

Author: Duncan MacNae

Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees. duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com View all posts by Duncan MacNae