Frozen waters
Her leaves are stripped; her ground is hard and frozen. The mountain is tired. She rests. All she can do is exhale. She has nothing left to give. Yet all around her are stories of her past, her splendors, of warmer days and wild ways.
Now she is open, a book left forgotten on the table, somewhere in the final chapter. The leaves blowing in the cold November air, pages turning towards the end.
Naked and exposed, not so much like a newborn child, innocent and helpless and crying for care. No, that is not she. She is a very old woman, though tired and weak, still somehow vast, sovereign, ancient in her wisdom of having lived and laughed and danced in the sun and rain. She asks for nothing. And may still give you what little she has left. Shelter. Wrinkled grey beauty. Tales told by the wind that has carved fissures in time along her flawed perfection.
Now she grows old and cold. Slowly she lets out a long and arduous sigh, stirring the dried brown leaves and rustling the naked branches. Perhaps her last breath before the snow closes over and puts her body to rest.
on the mountain at the end of november