Work in Progress: Declaim from the Mountaintop

My husband recently went walkabout in the mountains of Vermont. He asked friends and family to provide poetry that he could read from the mountaintop. So I wrote him this.

Declaim from the Mountaintop

for Alex
5/21/2009

Why do we do
things we don't want to do?
Work, wash, whisper, wake,
why? Obligation, politesse,
politics, necessity?
We all do it,
those small things we dislike,
make us weary or worrisome,
because we think we must.

Do not let this,
your declaimation upon a mountaintop
be one of them.
Step outside convention,
ignore obligation,
punt propriety.
Breathe.

Now stand upon your mountaintop,
not master of all you survey
but, just for these few moments,
blissful master of nothing,
and ask:

Why do I do what I do?
Why do I?

And now let go even
of the need
to ask.

- with love, Jenise