Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MY MOUNTAIN NEIGHBORS, by MILDRED GAVITT DODGE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MY MOUNTAIN NEIGHBORS, by                    
First Line: The hem of her skirt makes a path to my gate
Last Line: My tall mountain neighbors and I.
Subject(s): Country Life; Neighbors


The hem of her skirt makes a path to my gate,
Her hat bears the plume of a cloud.
Her waist is encircled with spruce and with pine,
My neighbor -- so strong and so proud.

Her face is deep-furrowed by storms that have blown;
She's wrinkled and wind-swept and brown.
Though countless the ages that pass o'er her head,
She stands there serene, looking down.

A mother she is to the birds and the deer,
And all the shy life of the wild;
Then why does she seem so forbidding to me,
An exile, a lost prairie child?

I climb to her shoulder, to glimpse once again
Horizons she shuts from my sight,
But I see only mountains, range upon range --
More mountains, to left and to right.

And so when my spirit feels prisoned and sad,
And I long for my prairies so dear,
I frown at my neighbors, so close and so tall,
And wish they did not live so near.

But tonight they are outlined, protective and strong,
Against the blue, star-sprinkled sky;
I think we shall some day be good friends and true,
My tall mountain neighbors and I.





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