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A Two Stone Tale

by Fredrich Mohre

I walk, again, these hills today,
Where as a child, I used to play.
Forty years have passed on since,
I’ve sat upon a wooden fence.
Huge limestone walls stood o’er this land,
Replaced by horrid scars of man.
Green rolling hills, with towering stone
Now vacant, gashed and overgrown.

“Twas an ancient sea that fossilized;
A wonderland to my young eyes.
A prehistoric ocean, rife
With multitudes of ancient life.
God’s hand turned stone, that massive sea.
So we could sense its history.
To touch, to feel to fondly gaze
On creatures, million years of age.

This treasure trove of bygone days,
Now fallen prey to human rage.
All crushed and broken underneath
Cleated track and iron teeth.
Gouged and pulverized to dust
To satisfy industry’s lust.
This atrocity..this mortal sin,
This razed archive of what had been.

The bubbling brook encased with moss,
All gone…a generation’s loss.
Gone, nature and its soothing ‘scape
Buried in unnatural shape.
Stands now a barren alien land
Ne’er to feel a young boy’s hands.
The future child will never see
Or touch these stones of history.

I’ve always dreamt that I would see
My son walks these hills with me.
See fossils, brook and arrowhead
And remnants of that ocean bed.
How sad, this dream won’t come to pass.
This touch of heaven didn’t last.
I ache inside, for he’ll not see
This site that meant so much to me.

I dug two stones up from the loam
To accompany my long journey home.
So I could always feel and touch
This place that was to me so much.
For deep within that primal wood…..
It’s gone forever….gone for good


Circa April 2001

03/30/2005

Author's Note: My mother died in 2001 and I had to drive the 1000 miles back for her funeral. I went back to the old homestead...It had been razed for a concrete and cement company...the whole 40 acres had been turned into a waste land..I wrote this in my saddness of it being gone.

Posted on 03/30/2005
Copyright © 2024 Fredrich Mohre

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Charlie Morgan on 03/30/05 at 07:15 PM

...fredrich, well a poignant and sad time for you has [at least] filled you with soooooome wonderfully sad-but-loving memories that you can share with us and ...mamas and daddys...mine are gone and yet your wonderful lil' traipse down memory lane re-kindles some wide-awake love for those asleep in His arms...a really, touching poetic work...peace, chaz

Posted by Mary Ellen Smith on 03/30/05 at 07:46 PM

Fred..the loss of your mom and of your childhood place at the same time...just heightens the sense of saddness in this. You have written this with so much vividness. The hills are still there in your heart and now you have given them to us.

Posted by Madeline Pestolesi on 04/05/05 at 10:35 PM

Yes, now soon the same thing can happen to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Gotta love progress! Just remind yourself of all the jobs it created right before it sucked every ounce of life out. Lovely poem, so sad.

Posted by Maude Curtis on 08/10/09 at 12:24 PM

Sad memories. My country home is still there although cultivated beyond it's previous beauty. The big old barn where we used to play torn down for a shiny new garage. They've cut down the hundred year old tree I used to climb for a smooth flat treeless span of grass and my Mom's fence row of climbing roses is only a memory long gone. Too bad our grandchildren will never see those sites.

Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 09/23/14 at 11:48 AM

this is a beautiful ode, Fredrich. congratulations on POTD.

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