Silent Mountains

What it was was never much, I know A camp, the hills—only the fallen snow Could flatter what every other day Saw fading bare and oily grey. But it was home. It was a place to go.

The noise was closer than the air it rode From coal car and tipple—it was sewed In the ear, as if it were a fly Pushing against the glass and wanting by. It ached inside The ear. It's aching still.

It is not that I mourn my youth that's lost Or grow weary at how the years get tossed One on one in this fumed memory of mine. Sad would be the word. I say be kind To one who cannot prove He was a boy

By pointing to a tree, a house or creek And saying from behind a rutted cheek "It was this world I was born into. My father carried off this hill on his shoe Into the house. My mother swept it out."

Now the town itself is swept away. The grey and crumbling houses are the whey Of three hundred lives, as near as many broods Who had to bide the mountain and its moods.

The mountain stands Silent now, biding other mountains.