Ah, I understand now.
You never cared for the name Mount McKinley.
In your earliest years, and many years after,
native peoples addressed you as Denali.
Translation: the tall one, the great one.
They recognized your power and majesty.
How difficult for you to share a name
with an American President who never
set foot in the shadow of your magnificence.
After all,
you rule over six million acres of wild land
intersected by one road, ninety-two miles long.
You watch over taiga forest,
high alpine tundra, amazing wild life,
beautiful fauna.
You are the highest peak
in North America,
towering over magnificent landscape.
In 2016,
on the eve of its 100th anniversary,
the National Park Service righted a wrong.
Your name was officially changed
to what it should have been all the years before.
Denali. For you are the mighty one.
William Shakespeare,
you had it all wrong in Romeo and Juliet!
Written for both Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe and for Day 16 of NaPoWriMo.
The Prompts: At dVerse, Sanaa asks us to write a poem in a conversational mode of address. In my post, I’m having a conversation with Denali. The NaPoWriMo prompt is to “write a poem in which we clearly describe an object or place and then end with a more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does.“
The great mountain Denali would disagree with William Shakespeare’s line in Romeo and Juliet “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”
Photo is from our trip to Alaska some years ago when we did indeed travel through Denali National Park and see this magnificent mountain!
lillian the home poet 