My Himalayas

Born to the Sunday–walk–sized hills
Of Lincolnshire, with yellow–hammers
For my bread and butter music
Larks for ecstasy,
It was enough to climb
Sheep–bitten turf
And smell the hawthornes,
See my home —
Gathered as in cupped hands.

I never ask for more.
Fashioned from vapour,
Peak upon snowlike peak
My Himalayas come, riding on air
From the horizon to my door,
Yet never wall me in
Or tiresomely insist on being climbed;
Offer instead their backs for flight
From everything I know
To where I've never been.