Sunday, June 26, 2016

In the Days Before Winter by smzang


The stark blue hills,
                   smoky soft at dawn…
Painter, poet
save them as they stand today
                                          unknowing
 
of the forest’s thinning,
unaware they’ve been mortgaged to the hilt
by guilty men who lack the heart
to stand up in a storm.
 
Even the kind hearted grow small
against the rising sun.
Smart and modern
we adjust creation until we have no home,
but I babble…
 
It is the hills that stand the test of time,
Soldiers fall like leaves, trees become poor poems
and those stacks that belched their smoke stand idle.
Bricks fall, fill the empty belly of the beast that fed us.
 
Ivy tangles and turns brown, but every evening
in the shadow of a day that’s done,
the hills stand tall in tortured stone,
They do not fear the dark.

Come morning when the sun is at a softer slant,
the smoky haze of day gives gentler hue
to hills that cup their hands
to catch the thunder.