Old Mountain Man

A monumental sonnet.

Photo by Kseniia Rastvorova on Unsplash

Excerpted from the sequence I wrote some years ago. This is the first time I made edits to it, too, so it is somewhat still in process.

I am also coming up dry currently for new writing projects, so I had to dig back into the archives for this one. In any case, thank you for taking a poetry break with me today.

Old Mountain Man:
a New Hampshire monument in memory. 

The cold rain drove the man to sit up high
above the winding road, in times gone by,
a silent stone guardian. The great notch
and the green hills knew of his faithful watch,
coarse crags unsullied by a human hand.
But storm after storm had whittled the land
in time, and what rain gave, it took again
in the dark fold of the mountain. See, then,
the old man humbled, remembered with pride.
Some wish him back, for the children, to hide
the gash in the hill’s face. But he is old
and we may learn much from the tales he told.
Scars are better, for the stories they tell
give us light to live, and outlast the knell.

©Graham Jackson, 2016