In the end, it will not matter
to these bare hills—the dust
we rose, the hay we fed
to cows, thin calves trailing
never knowing green. Or
the cacophony of pleas
to separate gods prolonged
in empty canyons echoing
hoarse and raspy songs.
A sick and starving coyote came
to the house, hairless as the hills,
to lie down in a damp spot,
too weak to leave without help.
In the end, it will not matter
to these bare hills, slowly
decomposing once again, if
we stay or go. It is the cows
we cared about, trusting souls
we owed, obliged to living
on next to nothing—even still
it will not matter to these hills.
drycrikjournal 
That was beautiful!
~M
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Thank you, Maria!
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“In the end, it will not matter / to these bare hills …” This really resonates with me. Where I live, we hike through the remnants of forest that dot suburban sprawl. I wonder if they begin to care that we approach. Maybe only the hills, below the forest, remain indifferent.
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Hard to say, Bill, but ‘maybe’ is the key word, isn’t it? Thanks for your comment.
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Beautiful, and thought provoking. I do hope that the canyons and hills, and the animals that live there, survive what man is doing, that they survive the impending drought.
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It’s amazing, Angeline, that as bad as it looks and as bad as it is for us and the cattle, how some species seem to thrive in a drought, like common gourds, hawks and bobcats. Perhaps because I’m not in the thick of humanity, I’m not too concerned about the wild surviving, but mankind, that’s another matter altogether. Awareness of both, however, is essential. Thanks so much for your comment and checking-in.
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And yet, and yet, for countless millenia these same hills have sustained and poured forth wave after wave and generation after generation of life.
But they breathe and dance, live and die, to a tempo unfathomly far from ours.
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Amen.
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