The Old Man We Shall Be

I was the old man who lived in the mountains.
I lived among the people, until the day the black spot
came up on my lot.
I hid among the wooded hills,
where no one thought to search for me.
People talked of me, for a time, as I truly was,
until no one remained who had shaken my hand in person.
After that, they talked of me in tones reserved
for legends.
My story became something grand as the mountains themselves,
inseparable from them in local consciousness.

I was the old man who died in the mountains.
A young fool out hunting shot me down
as I fished in a stream that had carved
two hills from a mighty peak.
I fell in its waters, he ran and kept silent.
Not that anyone remembered I was here.
What is history worth to fleeting youth, after all?
No one wondered about my end
as fish and wolves, in vengeance for kin slain,
devoured my body
and the sediment built up around my bones
to harden into rock.

I was the old man who lay in the mountains.
Water rushed over my old bones for ages,
grinding away what was weak and broken,
replacing it with silt that came to be strong,
reinforced by what rode the current.
Down I was pressed, ever-hardened
as the weight upon my bones increased.
A million creatures, men among them, splashed over me
over a million years, chipping off bits from the surface,
yet my tomb only grew.

I was the old man who became part of the mountains.
One day I looked into the earth
to find only myself beneath me.
I had been looking up through the rushing stream
into the world I knew before;
I had not noticed how firmly I was rooted
in the silt and soil that lay here before me.
Trees had sprung up all over my body,
deer and wolf hunted and bred across my belly,
salmon swam upstream in my veins
to return to where they were born.
There were no mountains
apart from me.

I am the old man who is the mountains.
I see you living on the hundred toes and fingers of my foothills.
I see you mining veins, exploring, charting
every glade and stream of what you think is
nature’s gift of bounty to you all.
What is history worth to a fleeting species, after all?
If your forefathers had taught you anything,
you’d be doing your damndest to keep me pleased.
I have only to stand, to tower over you, tumble down and crush you all.
For I am the earth, the forests and streams which bore you from beasts.
I am the mountains.