SOLILOQUY

Some melancholy thoughts on a sunny
Sunday afternoon. 
Submitted to Poets United
Poetry Pantry
July 2, 2017


For more than 30 years, my three good friends and I spent a week every autumn in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.  Creatures of habit, we stayed in the same room in the same lodge for all those years.  We spent long hours on the little balcony over the mountain river, and slept listening to the sound of its tumbling progress over the rocks below.   We shared our lives, our joys and tribulations, and marked those long hours with sometime tears, but always with much laughter.  The years passed, and two of our foursome  passed on to what comes after.  Last year, a careless spark ignited a dreadful fire that swept down the mountainside and burned to the ground the lodge we loved so much.  I was bereft.  One day soon, I thought, the last two of us shall follow our friends, and we’ll all be gone … the four of us, the lodge, and the balcony where we shared our lives.  We’ll all be but a blip in the passage of time.  A new lodge will replace the old, and new young housewives will come for their annual girlfriend getaway.  But I wonder, I just wonder,  if our spirits may not linger in the green hills above,  the sound of our laughter be heard faintly as the water tumbles over the rocks below, and our names be written in the smoky mists that hang over the mountains.

Smoky Mountain autumn
spirits linger in green hills
laughter in the air

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