Mountain Man
A Wintry Ballad
Mountain man.
Gruff thick tightly woolen beard.
Calloused hands a permanent red.
Clothes many-layered, drawn close.
Husky with a scar above her left eye,
Who pulls a sled of axe and gear
Down snowed hills and mountainsides.
Plays guitar in a small wooden mountain hut,
Bandages over rough palm,
Husky at feet,
Fire filling the chimney with well-earned smoke.
Hunts ptarmigan with archery,
Cooked on turning rusting spit,
Over and over—for thirty years.
Hair as gray as snow at sunset,
Frozen in time by a familiar frost.
Skin scarred and bruised
Like the spot on the pine that’s held
His axe.
Horse black and a speck against
A blizzard tapestry. Twenty blizzards
Up this mountain man’s sleeve.
Years of ice in eye,
Crystallized;
Cradles snow like
A firstborn,
Curled on top of hand-made bedframe
Husky in tow.
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