Denali

Denali! What a beautiful sight (and sound), 

far better than Mount McKinley,

called now as people called it first,

The Tall One, gigantic as Death:

White ice and snowed rock,

glacial white, all white,

lit by an early morning sun, 

just up from a green-brown foreground

stretching a summery seventy-five miles.

The full sunshine, horizontal,

made a trans-illuminating effect,

as if intended to show this off,

The Peak of The Alaskan Range,

at once, both real and abstract,

soothing, somehow, in all.

It will last forever

as one of my memories,

which obviously will not last forever,

but nevertheless, as long as I,

shorter by quite a bit than this mountain,

which, in human terms, is Eternity.