The Snowbound Sentinel’s Lament
Beneath the moon’s pale, ever-watchful eye,
Where frost-kissed pines in silent vigil stand,
A figure treads the slopes where shadows lie,
An ancient man with ash-clenched, trembling hand.
The mountain wears its ermine robes of snow,
Each step he takes etches a mournful creed,
Through veils of time where spectral breezes blow,
He climbs to meet the ghost of buried deed.
His breath, a wraith that coils in frozen air,
Mingles with whispers of the long-dead past,
While memories, like wolves, begin to stare
From caverns where his heart locked chains steadfast.
The wind intones a dirge through creviced stone,
A symphony for choices left unmade,
Each note a seed of anguish deeply sown,
In fields where youth’s bright blossoms dared to fade.
Here, fifty winters prior, his laughter rang,
A youth aflame with friendship’s sacred fire,
Two souls who scaled these heights where falcons sang,
Bound not by blood, yet closer than desire.
But pride, that serpent coiled in mortal breast,
Had struck with venom when disputes arose,
And harsh words flung in tempest’s cruel unrest
Had forged a chasm deeper than the snows.
“Return,” the mountain murmurs in his ear,
“The ice that seals thy wounds must crack and bleed,
What hands constructed, hands may yet repair,
But time’s swift river floats no backward reed.”
Yet still he’d lingered in the lowland’s haze,
Where comfort’s opiate dulled regret’s sharp thorn,
While on these slopes, through countless sunlit days,
His brother-stranger faced the storm alone.
Now twilight’s fingers streak the western sky,
As through a drift his gnarled staff strikes a chest—
A tin long buried where all secrets lie,
Its rusted hinges by his tears addressed.
Within, a parchment stained by decades’ toll,
Unfurls the truth his fear had barred him from:
“To thee I write, though trembling hands control,
Beneath the shadow of death’s gathering drum.
“When last we parted in this desolate place,
The avalanche that from our quarrel sprang
Did trap me here in time’s unyielding grace,
Yet still I deemed thee worth this final pang.
No malice lingers where my breath grows thin,
But love, like mountain stone, endures all weathers—
Fly swift, dear friend, ere winter’s claws sink in,
Lest we be joined once more in death’s pale tethers.”
The script dissolves beneath his anguished cry,
As north winds shriek their triumph through the pass,
The past, a specter materializing nigh,
Reveals his friend encased in glacial glass—
A figure poised mid-reach, face carved with care,
Eternalized in ice’s sapphire hue,
Their outstretched hands still sundered by the air,
A bridge unbuilt though years have drenched them through.
“Forgive!” he wails to cliffs that mock his pain,
As blizzards weave death’s livery round his bones,
The tin now pressed where heartbeat’s frail refrain
Maps rhythms slower than the glacier’s groans.
Beneath the stars that coldly witness all,
Two shapes emerge from Time’s relentless stream—
Youth’s vibrant echo by the icewall’s thrall,
And age’s wreck where sorrow’s banners gleam.
The dawn finds stillness on the snowbound height,
Two statues framed by light’s impartial glow:
One clasping words that came too late for flight,
One petrified mid-gesture long ago.
The mountain keeps its counsel, wise and deep,
Where human hearts and elements conspire,
And in its breast, the secrets all must keep
Are buried under beauty’s funeral pyre.
Thus ends the tale where pride and love collided,
A parable etched in frost and vain regret,
Of paths not taken, trusterships divided,
And how the living pay the dead’s last debt.
Let wanderers who brave these mournful slopes
Heed well the lesson written in the ice—
That stubborn hearts are but their own tightropes,
And mercy’s moment bears no repetition’s price.
Where frost-kissed pines in silent vigil stand,
A figure treads the slopes where shadows lie,
An ancient man with ash-clenched, trembling hand.
The mountain wears its ermine robes of snow,
Each step he takes etches a mournful creed,
Through veils of time where spectral breezes blow,
He climbs to meet the ghost of buried deed.
His breath, a wraith that coils in frozen air,
Mingles with whispers of the long-dead past,
While memories, like wolves, begin to stare
From caverns where his heart locked chains steadfast.
The wind intones a dirge through creviced stone,
A symphony for choices left unmade,
Each note a seed of anguish deeply sown,
In fields where youth’s bright blossoms dared to fade.
Here, fifty winters prior, his laughter rang,
A youth aflame with friendship’s sacred fire,
Two souls who scaled these heights where falcons sang,
Bound not by blood, yet closer than desire.
But pride, that serpent coiled in mortal breast,
Had struck with venom when disputes arose,
And harsh words flung in tempest’s cruel unrest
Had forged a chasm deeper than the snows.
“Return,” the mountain murmurs in his ear,
“The ice that seals thy wounds must crack and bleed,
What hands constructed, hands may yet repair,
But time’s swift river floats no backward reed.”
Yet still he’d lingered in the lowland’s haze,
Where comfort’s opiate dulled regret’s sharp thorn,
While on these slopes, through countless sunlit days,
His brother-stranger faced the storm alone.
Now twilight’s fingers streak the western sky,
As through a drift his gnarled staff strikes a chest—
A tin long buried where all secrets lie,
Its rusted hinges by his tears addressed.
Within, a parchment stained by decades’ toll,
Unfurls the truth his fear had barred him from:
“To thee I write, though trembling hands control,
Beneath the shadow of death’s gathering drum.
“When last we parted in this desolate place,
The avalanche that from our quarrel sprang
Did trap me here in time’s unyielding grace,
Yet still I deemed thee worth this final pang.
No malice lingers where my breath grows thin,
But love, like mountain stone, endures all weathers—
Fly swift, dear friend, ere winter’s claws sink in,
Lest we be joined once more in death’s pale tethers.”
The script dissolves beneath his anguished cry,
As north winds shriek their triumph through the pass,
The past, a specter materializing nigh,
Reveals his friend encased in glacial glass—
A figure poised mid-reach, face carved with care,
Eternalized in ice’s sapphire hue,
Their outstretched hands still sundered by the air,
A bridge unbuilt though years have drenched them through.
“Forgive!” he wails to cliffs that mock his pain,
As blizzards weave death’s livery round his bones,
The tin now pressed where heartbeat’s frail refrain
Maps rhythms slower than the glacier’s groans.
Beneath the stars that coldly witness all,
Two shapes emerge from Time’s relentless stream—
Youth’s vibrant echo by the icewall’s thrall,
And age’s wreck where sorrow’s banners gleam.
The dawn finds stillness on the snowbound height,
Two statues framed by light’s impartial glow:
One clasping words that came too late for flight,
One petrified mid-gesture long ago.
The mountain keeps its counsel, wise and deep,
Where human hearts and elements conspire,
And in its breast, the secrets all must keep
Are buried under beauty’s funeral pyre.
Thus ends the tale where pride and love collided,
A parable etched in frost and vain regret,
Of paths not taken, trusterships divided,
And how the living pay the dead’s last debt.
Let wanderers who brave these mournful slopes
Heed well the lesson written in the ice—
That stubborn hearts are but their own tightropes,
And mercy’s moment bears no repetition’s price.
“`
