ON MANDOLIN MOUNTAIN
In the time of high manners, on Mandolin Mountain,
I was walking the path through the woods. Above me,
a crazy hawk; alongside me, the running river.
Everywhere, something akin with Nature,
and a language I could understand clearly.
This high up from nowhere, the trapper had
a cabin in the woods; he'd settled in long years
before and I'd met him cutting brush. Just out
from Waverly, along the routing river where
we'd find fossils by the tens. Bristles of sunlight,
coned and filtered, swarmed with light like the
tiny bugs in our Summer faces. We'd pole a
shelter and light a fire by nightfall, three, four,
five of us - each a wanderer seeking place or
a mission. It was 1974, and nothing was everywhere,
everywhere was nothing. The man on the magazine
face said Nixon had resigned. Late August by then.
Who cared? Atop this line of trees, it seemed here
everything had turned to evergreen and conifer.
Nothing left, were October to ever come, for
leaves to fall from. No incentive to bring
a natural death to a place so filled with life.
By September tenth we were all, each,
already gone ourselves; and the trapper
was alone again and on his own.
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