My Grandfather’s Hills

My grandfather lies at the foot of an oak
far from the beaten path,
and never before has a spirit so free
lain fettered in sleep.

But although he lies and walks no more,
I see his eyes in the setting of the sun
and I hear his voice when the sap runs,
for these are an old man's hills.

Don't tell me the government "owns" them,
for the government didn't live them
and breathe them and know them—
only he did.

Don't tell me the government "regulates" them,
when seventy years
of his sweat and his blood and his tears
flow through the waters of these hills
to nourish the trees ...

No, these 
                are an old man's hills.

No one knew them as he did—
every hole where the woodchucks hid,
every nest where the blue jays lived—
and nobody loved them
as much as he loved them.

Only he cared when the flood waters killed
the tiny buds and the blades of grass
that grew beyond the fields.

And only he cared when the last bear died,
caught killing livestock.
"The oldest bear ever lived,"
he'd brag, "and the smartest."
Though we'd often hear it trip and crash
against the trash cans.

These are an old man's hills,
and they will never be the same
without his loving hand
gently transplanting shrubs and trees
that otherwise would have died
in the rocky, shopworn land.

Yes, these are an old man's hills,
and his eyes were the blue of the autumn skies
he knew so well even after he went blind.

"There's a few wispy clouds to the west today,
fadin' away, ain't they, boy?"
he'd ask me, and of course he was right.
"Sure are, 'pa," I'd reply, and a smile would crease his face
and a warmth would pour out of his soul,
for he loved his hills.

Don't say that someday
the wind and the rain
will weather away
his mark from the land—
the well that he dug
and the wall that he built
and the fields that he planted
with his two callused hands.

A memory cannot wither away
when it’s reborn in the songs of the raucous jays
and heard within the laughing waters
of the sea's silver daughters.

An old man lives within these hills, although he walks no more;
I have often heard his voice within the winter's stormy snore;
and I’ve seen his eyes flash, sometimes, in the bluest summer sky;
and I’ve heard his knowing laughter in my newborn baby's cry.