TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

Every religion has its holy sites: Jerusalem, Mecca, Vatican City, Lumbini, the Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal, among many, many others. Believers might make a pilgrimage to that place—a visit to show their respect and perhaps experience a transcendent moment or find personal transformation. 

I’m not a religious person, but I think everyone has places that are sacred to them—places we might return to as pilgrims, as seekers. I think of how people visit the graves of their ancestors, or the places where they once lived. When we stand where our loved ones once stood, it does feel special and meaningful to be in that space, on that ground.

I think of how common it is for people to want to go back to their childhood towns or even houses, to see what has changed and to remember what it was like to live there. I think of people returning again and again to places in nature that feel like homes away from home—certain coastlines or forests or mountains. 

Today’s poem meditates on sacred spaces, and how they mean something different to each of us.

At the Base of the Mountain
by Amanda Hawkins

Like when someone you love dies and you go to see the body—
the hands you used to hold, their dry tender skin,

or when you return to the place the remains were spread,
the texture of the grains of sand and rock indiscernible from what

could be the ashes—the mountain behind the monastery
rises, like an atheist’s unspoken prayer, a holy however: the divine

keeps separate except when the divine comes down, unburns
a bush, speaks to the wind, commands the mountains to leap into the sea.

Generally, exposed rock here suggests origination from differing depths.
Beware, says a respected theologian, don’t read meaning into places

meaning might not exist. When Almighty descended
in a cloud or fire on the place above where the people camped, I read

the mountain melted. Melted, like wax. Like a flake of fat on the tongue,
the mountain melted. Never mind no one agrees

on which mountain the Lord came down, if the Lord came down at all
or if there is a Lord to come. Some say something holy happened

somewhere on a mountain, and we want to confirm the location, name the place.
Who would not want to return to a place of revelation?

Some go to churches, consecrated sites, on pilgrimages
in their minds or on foot to locations they believe

something near holy might or might have or could once again.
Never mind the place one calls the Mountain of God is most likely not

the place a neighbor calls the mountain of the same name.
Never mind when I was there at the base I felt nothing

but absence and the still foreignness of unbelief.
Even then I must have something—of myth, or monasteries,

or the mountain itself. I must have. Even now I keep returning.

“At the Base of the Mountain” by Amanda Hawkins from WHEN I SAY THE BONES I MEAN THE BONES © 2025 Amanda Hawkins. Used by permission of the poet