Mount Harrison: Southern Idaho
Christmas when I was twenty-five, visiting
Home with three children and a second husband,
I asked Mama if Mount Harrison had
Always been there.
I remember every kind of weed, bug, bird
And animal along the canals and the Snake River,
So if that mountain had been there
I would have seen it there, wouldn't I?
I suppose Mount Harrison always Was
Hunched large on the horizon. But where?
Did I run along the banks of the Snake all the
Summers I was nine, ten, eleven, never looking up?
Now as I drive my grandchildren
Over the river and through the desert
I always point it out. "Look!" I cry,
"It's a sleeping Giant! Isn't He beautiful?"
Maybe if I had seen Him, curled `round the
Horizon, the child I was would have felt
Safe in that valley - not restless, edgy,
Fearing to turn my back on the wind.
....... ..... Heywood Williams -- December, 1989
