On a Dark Day
When I go back to visit
the mountains of my youth,
and I see
the whipped-cream clouds
spread low on the horizon,
I remember the days we spent climbing and sliding.
I remember the snow mountains.
Forever snow, Julia called it, because it was all around,
and we made it into
perfume.
There were sheep in the mountains,
and I played Heidi,
(Julia was Peter),
and we cuddled with the lambs like dolls.
A river ran through the valley near our house
like a ribbon
and gave us comfort, Father said,
but I felt safer in the mountains.
I climbed mountains to be safe
but Julia climbed them to be strong,
for she craved nothing else to be.
Her strong was my safe.
Spring brought rain every year
and the river grew
to our front porch.
Swollen with leaves and mud,
the sound of it crashed onto my head for days
and rumbled through my dreams
at night.
The river unsettled me.
I always stayed inside and waited
for Julia to come
whistling ‘Michael row…’
and she always did.
One day, with her hands in her pockets and her hair
plastered to her head
and dripping, she pleaded and charmed my mother
until I was allowed out.
Shouting we ran out into the gray land
we called home, and teased its ugliness
to make us feel better.
Up the slippery mountain we climbed
to the plateau of soaked brown grass
that would soon become beautiful
again.
A flock of sheep stood like rocks.
We tiptoed past them so we wouldn’t disturb
their mourning, and whispered
in rain that had turned soft.
Shivering and wet, we loped through the grass
to a familiar path of mud that gently led back down
to the river and valley where I lived.
The house looked like it was painted
on the hill behind it.
In sheer delight, Julia plunged
down the mud path.
I followed.
Blinded by spray from Julia’s dive,
I slipped down the slope
praying
there was nothing in my way,
and I kept my mouth closed.
It seemed an hour before
I reached the bottom,
and I was laughing, mud-blind and bruised.
The voice of the river exploded in my ears.
I called to Julia joyfully
“what will mother say!” but
she didn’t answer.
I called again,
and again no answer
and my insides cried.
Wiping the mud recklessly from my eyes
I was helpless and crying when
Julia spoke.
“Come right away,” she said,
and I could finally see enough to know
Julia was not hurt.
She held a lamb.
Scrambling to my feet I squished
to her side.
The river was very close
and frightening.
Julia knelt at the edge of the rushing course,
plastered with mud,
holding a snowy lamb who
did not move.
It was soaked and looked strangely bright next to the
world of mud around us.
“It’s dead, I think,” Julia whispered, and
her tears blended with the rain that struck
the lamb.
Reaching out my trembling hand,
I touched the lamb that was cold
and dead.
We stood in silence
not knowing what to do,
then Julia laid him gently on the ground
away from the river
and we began to dig.
The pelting raindrops slowly cleansed our backs
and diluted our hair.
After covering the body,
I sat close to watch the grave
while Julia assembled the cross of sticks
that would mark it.
The rain grew heavier and the skies darker
as we prepared to leave.
With the cross in place, we bowed our heads
and said goodbye, then followed the river home
as thunder blended with it’s roar.
Sometimes in the summer we visited the grave
until we were old enough to forget.
Now we are too old not to remember
and we take the journey in our minds,
through the rain and up the slippery mountain,
across the plateau of soaked brown grass and past
the mourning sheep-like-rocks,
down the slope of mud, as blind then
as Julia is today,
and pause at the grave of the strangely bright
lamb who died
on a dark day
beside the roar of a river
and thunder.
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