Autumn in the Mountains | Poem

Autumn in the Mountains
 

Knowing on some specific day that
you are now locked in for winter baby.
it's aaaaaaal over, all those meadows that
I walked in this summer with the dogs
with the wildflowers blooming everywhere
the green aspen leaves clicking in the breeze
.....no more
it's all gone
it's dead
not only is it dead but
in a couple of weeks it will be buried
in several feet of snow and ice and
I won't lay eyes on it again
until next summer

A year ago this thought
would have been unbearable
but something has changed this year
instead of having a dead, despondent,
hopeless feeling thinking
about summer playgrounds now inaccessible
locked in ice, and lonely
without me, my natural inclination seems
to be to drift off to sleep at night
projecting myself out there, in the woods
three, five, ten miles from my cozy comforter
and marveling at the wildness of it all

I don't know if it's real but sometimes
at night I can see myself out
there in the middle of it, frozen
but I don't feel it, and I watch
the woods do their thing
thing is they don't really do anything
they just sit there, year after year
frozen and baked, blooming and withering

Once in a while some "happening" will occur
like a herd of elk wandering through
or me walking with my dogs
other than that
the woods just sit there and nothing
ever "happens"

Sometimes late at night
I find myself
hanging around meadows out there
just watching nothing happen
but listening
intently

- Mike Glover

Mike's menu   /   Moongate

 

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