Forest of the Fall (Minstrel Mondays)

I've been busy this past week, so it's time to bring out a hunk of poetry from the grooveyard of forgotten favorites!



Trimble Mountain Summit (Left)
As viewed from my front yard
October 1997



Here's something I wrote ten years ago, reminiscing about the walks I used to take into the woods behind my home.  Trimble Mountain used to be covered with farms back in the 1800's, but it's now an unpopulated forest, with some cellar holes and a few relics of civilization around.  Some recent logging activity and 4-wheelers have changed the landscape up there since those days when I adventured into the wilderness, so the wilderness of my childhood memories has been lost to me.  Oh, well; everything changes.

For many an afternoon in my young life

I spent time away from all others.

Seeking solitude among a great forest,

old trees overshadowing ancient roads,

long overgrown with grass and molds.

A century had passed before my birth

since human life had flourished

in this fallow soil.

And I know as I walk these forgotten roads

that once proud farmers plowed these fields

and toiled honestly for their meals.

An amber leaf of an autumn maple

falls upon my hand

as I walk this row which once housed homes.

The abandoned homesteads

of this forgotten wilderness,

lifetimes ago, they bustled with life,

agricultural might,

but now they are lost,

forever silent,

only cellar holes remain.

The hillside I climb to reach the relics

of a forgotten farmer's pride.

The phantom image of once plowed fields

flashes over my eyes.

Yet those ghosts of the hills

are replaced by truthful chills,

that fields are gone forever,

consumed by the forest of the fall.