Poetry of Issue #7        Page 52

Today I Will Be The Old Man Of The Mountain

Today I will be the old man of the mountain
Standing on all my years, my hair white and gray
         like the top of a mountain, I shall write my  poems
              on the rocks for the eagles and the mountain goats,
for the moon and the stars to read.

Or maybe Today I will be the bear that went over the mountain only
to see another mountain, an old bear whose mountains
are numbered

		among the pines
		along the streams
		in the quick rush of a sudden wind

a rabbit's shadow falls across words I do not understand
I am only a bear
I will chase the rabbit

Or Today I will be a mountain. Cold Mountain or The Big Rock Candy Mountain,
or the mountain that came to Mohammed, or only the mountain of an apartment 
on the seventeenth floor of a building in a city
where I am an old man 
looking out of a window and
writing a poem now and then.

Today I will be

Maybe that is mountain enough.

  Frank Murphy