Saturday, November 16, 2019

Poetry: Wind Refreshing Cabin Memories

Wind Refreshing Cabin Memories

Wind pushing uphill cannot clear
the mountain of this mist
nor quite bring on much-needed rain.
Aspen leaves quake on no ear,
their timeless tremulosa dismissed
with the white-throated sparrow’s refrain.

In the fireplace a green-cut round
of mountain ash boils out its sap
with flames pulled tall by wind
— that shouldn’t be bound
uphill. A freakish front’s mishap
let such a breach of etiquette in.

Crane Mountain lurks cloud-hidden
whereabouts unknown, memory
layered deeper than kitchen middens.
Dad recites Sandburg’s “There Is A Wolf in Me.”
until we’d pray the Lord our souls to take,
while the aura of the wolf kept us awake.

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.

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Ed Zahniser retired as the senior writer and editor with the National Park Service Publications Group in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He writes and lectures frequently about wilderness, wildlands, and conservation history topics. He is the youngest child of Alice (1918-2014) and Howard Zahniser (1906–1964). Ed’s father was the principal author and chief lobbyist for the National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964. Ed edited his father’s Adirondack writings in Where Wilderness Preservation Began: Adirondack Writings of Howard Zahniser, and also edited Daisy Mavis Dalaba Allen’s Ranger Bowback: An Adirondack farmer - a memoir of Hillmount Farms (Bakers Mills).


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One Response

  1. Bob Meyer says:

    Many wonderful visualizations from this poem.
    thanks Ed

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