Black Mountain Crest

The day lifts my maudlin spirit as I
cross a mountain summit, gazing at misty peaks ten miles distant,
a fresh breeze playing on my skin.
A pack full of life support and boots solid on a rocky path to new vistas.

I could walk forever and someday I might.
The trail never ends and adventure beckons like a lover.

A hawk spirals, “scre-e-e-e.” The snags jut upward like bones.
Bones of trees now deceased,
from acid rain and tiny bugs, protesting their fate, refusing to fall, stalwart
against the gales of the mountain. I like the snags.

I like the hemlocks and the balsams, the trillium and the laurel as they spill down
the mountain’s flanks, hangers on in a world of clouds and wind.

Today I walk the ridge, struggle up the rocks, clamber over deadfall, making for the sky.
My water tastes sweet, each swallow precious, renewal six miles distant if I’m lucky.

The thighs burn like living volcanoes, the lungs take in all I can give them, the heart pounds steady, a fragile system clinging to this stony titan of the Blue Ridge.
In some ways the day is better remembered than lived.

Clouds roll in, sliding northward from the east, threatening to overspill the ridge,
they collide with this colossus and they change their minds,
timidly caressing its flanks as they take the path of least resistance
and travel, like man, through the Toe River Valley.

I smile at the thought, a vague satisfaction that I walk where the clouds couldn’t go.
I watch as they move on, a train of gray mist, leaving like a defeated team.
You lost, I think.

On Winter Star we make camp in an ever green arbor, strewn with boulders.
Struggle to make a fire, eat our canned food and an apple.
The night covers the summits; again the clouds come, this time from the west,
The easier side.
Rain patters on the tent as I cocoon myself in my bag. There are
Night sounds around us.
Sleep waits outside while the night wind whispers through branches in the darkness,
In a strange ancient tongue,
telling me some secret it had kept for a million winters.

**

Across This Hallowed Ground

The night wind wanders through the gravestones
touching each with a feathery hand.
The wan moon warms the landscape
with pale yellow light
that glosses the leaves.
I look at the crosses and the Stars of David
and I wonder what might have been,
had these young men, who lie now
so still in this solid ground,
come home living.

Would they have happy families
and grandchildren on their knees.
Would they wander the streets homeless
their lives drowned in the contents of a bottle.
Would they dream big dreams
or abide with the humble.
Would they live, and pray, and love
with all the zest of their truncated youth.

It is an eternal sadness, these thoughts.
What might have been; what might have been.

I must believe their lives are bright now
among the stars, held in God’s perfect hand,
where the brutal pain of battle is not remembered,
where the cold fear of rumbling guns has passed away.
Yes, they must be there, shining like day,
happy in all.

I turn and walk away, from these earthly remembrances
From this resting place of heroes
And say a prayer for the rest of us.