Captured by Splendor

I recently received a photo Christmas card with a note on the back side asking if I would write a poem that captured the moment as seen in the photo.  That woke up the Muse, who has been suspiciously silent lately.

By the next morning, various phrases had coalesced into the following:

Lost in thoughts of the everyday kind,

I travel a vast and untamed land,

Find hardscrabble purchase as a hill I climb

And pause to rest at the crest.

Before me are valleys I’ve yet to explore

And sunlit mountains under snow-white duvet.

Captured by splendor, I am scarcely aware

My thoughts—and my breath—have been stolen away.

I had mentioned to my friend that I found it difficult to write metaphorically, and not until I finished the poem and read it for the umpteenth time did I realize it could be a metaphor for life as a whole, and each line a metaphor for the various stages in life.  My Muse works in strange ways.

Photo courtesy of Bob and Karol Libbey