LITR 3731 Creative Writing 2006

The Lady and the Mountain

by JT O’Neal

She wanders this lonesome mountain

Where the sun shies from a touch

And each crackling step

            breaks the icy silence

            on the path to a bygone farmhouse

Through a ruined doorway

She steps a century back

            A thick of ghosts

            sting her cheeks with stares

            from bone-chilled hollows

Chaffing their hands by the shadow of flame

They cling to each other

            in defiance of forgetting

                        playing the parlor game

                        of who they were

She leaves behind these two small rooms

In the shimmering silver footfalls

Of a woman once called mother

            Hand in hand they drift

            down the mountain

There, on this lonesome mountain

The Lady leaves behind the lying evergreens

            for bare limbs

            that stain the snow with

            glistening red ribbons of shade

With her hands in the land she raises

A joyful elegy  

            and sings for the unremembered

                        who step in time

                        to the music of memory

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