AUGUST THE SECOND

  

Blue helmets, bobbing on the heads

Of scurrying school children,

Distract ones gaze toward the cliffs

Of hazy Sugarloaf Mountain.

 

They’re warned to be on the lookout

For hidden Timber Rattlesnakes,

Copperheads in the Poison Oak,

Root-cracked footholds that might break.

 

This mountain’s rustic pioneers

Compared it to a sugar loaf.

They must have gotten hungry here,

While they explored its unmapped slopes!

 

The Sugarloaf, geologically,

Is what we call a Monadnock:

The countryside was worn away

Around its quartzite hulk of rock.

 

These things take time. I stand forth here

Unknown, unnamed and unexplored;

No soul in sight for years and years;

This mountain of my verse ignored.

 

No matter: what I earn of fame

Will take its sweet time to accrue.

My settlers will invent a name

That suits my life of solitude.

 

A holiday will mark my birth

One day in the Eternal Now—

When children scale the rugged earth

That wrinkles on my ancient brow!