The mountains stand there still. <br />Towering giants in rocky armor <br />Royal sentinels of the Alaskan Guard. <br /> <br />Thick green their tunics of birch and pine <br />Sheer white their helmets of sun-beaming snow <br />And icy sabers in crystal scabbards <br />Hang from earthen belts of blackened sod. <br /> <br />There in the dusk of violet shadow <br />The piercing eye can see <br />The deepening crevices of countless centuries <br />Etched in those imperious faces <br />Of glacier-hewn stone. <br /> <br />But my time is gone <br /> <br />Turned to dust in the arctic wind <br />And no more <br />My eyes behold imperial splendor <br />No more my heart sing in the stinging cold <br />Free from the smoke of city steel. <br /> <br />Yes I did sing <br />Once. <br />My winged spirit sailed o’er those rocky crags <br />And flew unbounded toward the low-lying sun. <br /> <br />Full in the face of the golden moon <br />My heart cried exultantly in the blue-diamond night <br />To hear the silence of a time-stopped river <br />Frozen in starlight on the ground below. <br /> <br />Yet a memory lives <br />When reality dies <br />And there in the darkness of a Brooklyn street <br />I will remember <br />And sing again <br />For the mountains stand there still. <br /> <br />(Previously published in Shadyvale Magazine, Fall 1999)<br /><br />Laurence Overmire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/alaskan-farewell/
