Changes

[Creel Allen Pickel, Jr.]

Soaring, graceful mountains

              touch the sky

Filled with glaciers ,

                         and morraine

And Changes

They have survived fire, and ice

Made and echoed many sounds

Since cataclysmic forces hurled them

                                              through the ground

They have known

                               Beauty

                                    Violence

                                             Serenity

And many beasts have known this place as home

 

The mountains have grown,

                                                aged;

With water, ice, and wind

Again,

             and again

Assaulting the rocks

Glaciers carving valleys

      giving birth to streams

           that run into the rivers 

                  that run into the sea

 

                                                       EPILOGUE

Open pits

 Blasted out of mountainsides

Rain gutted roads no longer used

A deer stumbles over rusted metal

Abandoned long ago

                                 to watch over lifeless streams.