Today is Leap Day and Charlie Hughes’s 17th birthday. Big doin’s tonight at the Carnegie Center in celebration of Charlie and his 20 years as editor of Wind Publications.
To mark the occasion, Charlie has given me permission to share one of his poems. Because I know he is a passionate environmentalist and publisher of environmental writing, and because I know he loves the mountains, the poem below seemed an appropriate choice. It is from his second book, Body and Blood.
Lament for Mountains
Look, the night
is upon us.
The mountains have cometo darkness
and the last deer has given
itself to the hunter.The trees are dissolving
into their own shadows.
The trumpet vinehas sounded its final call,
and the tap root
of the honeysuckle is pullingits last breath of fragrance
from the earth.
The fox has no truckwith the rabbit
and the squirrel in its nest
dozes and twitcheswhile the bobcat
sharpens its perfect claws.
To have learned anythingin this life is to listen.
Still, no one hears
the blacksnake swallowthe robin’s blue egg.
The cricket has ceased
its raspy sawand there is no whisper
of water
from ephemeral streams,nor any owl
or whippoorwill calling
in this dark.— Charlie Hughes
