Wyoming

Wyoming

You lift your rugged mountains to the sky.

                Each peak a mile or more above the seas

                Up where the air will blow and bite and freeze

And comb the clouds as silently they fly

 

Collecting snow so cold it feels like dry

Ice upon the weathered, broken rocks

Tumbled from the mountains, toppled blocks

Where years and weather sound like one long sigh

 

The snow across your frozen ground does lie

                In wind-swept drifts that hide the rocks and ruts

                And smooths the land of all its dips and juts

The earth looks smooth, unbroken to the eye.

 

Below the mountain peaks so tall and high

                The valley’s rolling hills look up their face

                They would be mountains in a lesser place

Here their height the mountains do belie.

 

In the valley here, a grizzly bear does hide

                But his tracks are all the evidence he leaves

                And all that see them there quickly believes

To meet him here is probably to die.

The tracks cross a creek under a slate-grey sky

                They’re clear and perfect in the fresh fallen snow

                And disappear as down the valley they go.

Sometime in the night the old boy passed by

 

Large herds of elk are migrating by

                They come up the hills in an unbroken stream

                Misty breath blowing and antlers agleam

Following old trails, and instincts they can’t deny

 

The snow is no challenge, nor the ridges too high

                They go where they want seeming only to stroll

                Their next feeding ground is their only goal

Like a caravan of old, they cover the miles

 

Mountains in heaven where winds heave and sigh

                Valleys of snow powdery and dry

                Bears and elk are traveling by

A land of harsh beauty, wonderful, wild.

 

©James L. Frady  12/24/2022