Artwalk POETRY and ART

The backbone of the land shows its age.
Time has worn down the once proud mountains
into low granite hills but have not yet
stolen away their mountainous power and glory.
They wear their age sedately, show no
sense of death. For here life continues
evident in all its hues of green:
the mix of thin needled evergreens
and the short and twisted broad leafed
that await their colour and fall,
to sleep under snow’s winter blanket.

Those seeming naked spots of baldness
on the old hills’ crowns are not empty,
proclaim not loss but proudly bear
dark olive mosses and gray-blue lichens.
At their feet slow water seeps
among clumps of reeds and wetland shrubs.
With the help of beavers, puddles form a pool.
This old life continues green as cattails,
strong and tough as the eternal trees,
still looking up and reaching for the sky.