Impressions On The Ferry - Dead Mountains - Andrew Barham

Raindrops on the window,
Mist on the mountains ...
There's a storm coming
Dark clouds hang
Pendulous in the sky
Somewhere near,
A baby cries
Outside, a tugboat pulls a raft of dead trees
Stripped from once green mountains
Now bare and littered with the skeletons
Of ancient Firs, Spruces, and Cedars,
A cemetery of the wild;
What creatures lived here
In this place of nebulous mists
And green trees?
Dead mountains.

(On the ferry between Gibsons & Horseshoe Bay, July 1987)

Andrew Barham