Quarry Walk

It has been a month since you last walked here.
Your back hurts as sweat dampens your shirt.
Wisdom perhaps would turn back, but you walk
up the slate walls to the first summit.

Most of the wildflowers are dead. Husks,
brown, orange and dried
cut at your bare legs, victims
less of summer’s heat than shallow roots
that could not bear even the shortest drought.

Still, there are a few survivors,
spikey cousins of the thistles, like purple snowflakes,
tiny yellow arches, the last few bluebells.
one surviving lambs ear with it’s velvety texture,

each survivor a defiant pretender that summer remains,
that the heat of the late day sun
is a thing of truth.

The prophets, though, are telling their truth.
Fall is coming. The first leaves are dying
their spectacular death, the white birch,
poison ivy red and evil, a host of trees
with just a kiss of color, a scarlet kiss of death

that makes you smile.
For you are not dead. A bit aged.
A bit worn and scarred. A creature
in transition, no less than the seasons.

You glory in it all. The pain. The sweat.
The insects that follow you through the canyon.
Each speck of color, even yes, the death
and abandonment. All are part.

You stand at the summit as the sun falls.
Already the temperature grows cool.
The sweat on your back chills you.
In half an hour it will be dark. The foxes
and coyotes will come out,

And so you turn downward
as the sun falls,
as the colors fade
everywhere
except in your mind.

About this poem

Most of my regular readers know I love across from an abandoned slate quarry. It is a good place to walk, whether you love nature, panoramas, stones. For me, though, it is a place where I lose myself, and often, find myself.

Tom

More pictures from tonight’s walk: