Hyner View, Pennsylvania

for Richard Cecil and Maura Stanton


Cirrus clouds sweep high, red into the sun-
set just above a distant mountain,
ridges away.

What lovers come? Not I. Alone. Here to witness
mountains confirm distance and separation,
the sun reveal

Earth to be spinning, bound to greater laws
than love. I have never been
a Romantic.

These mountains have always been just mountains,
and this great river only water flowing
to lower land,

but today, I can almost feel remorse at the sight
of houses below that the train,
loaded with lumber,

passes at dusk, or passes empty at dawn, almost believe
in the agony of that sparrow darting
at the hawk that has

robbed its nest, but I'm not convinced anything feels
anything. And what I feel now, loneliness?
Anger? Or simply

the passage of time away from the person I love?
It is fall, and Hyner is beautiful:
colored trees velvet

outlying mountains, sun-glow spills onto the horizon,
cold of night, or winter lifts my skin,
and the Susquehanna

river clear in view two thousand feet below, devoid
of fish, yet another perfection
blemished,

washes stones with water invisibly polluted
by coal mines near Renovo,
Pennsylvania.

© K. John Russell, May 1991