Buses careen on a mountain road chickens in passengers’ laps. Cars, semis, scooters speed past a concrete strip mall, where I dug out barracks and patched the craters left by enemy bombs fifty years ago.
Prostitutes smoke at the truck stop where I fell in love with a handsome soldier. Our mountain burned with passion, smoked with death. A week later I buried his remains.
Now the mountain breathes the fumes of diesel gasoline, suffers the onslaughts of dynamite and bulldozers. Workers widen the highway where we once followed a footpath and drank from cold, clear streams.
Though carved and changed the mountain lives on, morning mist wraps around it like comfort. I pray for its long life, at least until the moment I decide to crawl inside and join the one I loved so many years ago.
