A Fool

Verbs and nouns now bleached and blown, no longer speak to eye nor ear except to say ‘time goes on and all is gone but I am here.’ The meadow is the valley’s crown, the valley is the mountain’s queen, the mountain is a minor king among the appellation rows. At center of this sylvan scene stands a statue firm and new of a woman just past girl. A bouquet in hand, a bride waiting for her man. But her glory will not come for he refused to be cut from the stone and cracked beneath the chisel’s blow. The meadow at the valley floor is a riddle to the yellowed road that twists to follow the mountain wall. And because there’s nowhere else to go the tarmac glides past smiling crags, intimidates the hanging cliff, glides down through a final turn and stops at a sign hung low: ‘A fool is buried here.’