This Is About Mountains

It’s maple sugar time
In the mountains.
The brook has climbed its bank
To look over into the world.
Trees are beginning to think . . .
They stretch themselves.
The bareness of the woods will go
If the pattern of the year is what I learned
Last Spring.
The mountains I knew best
Used to have festivals . . .
There was September on Starr King . . .
I remember the apple-sauce tree,
I remember how I would smash apples on top of a rock
Crush them with a stone for the calves to eat.
How the chipmunks scolded me for taking the apples!
Chipmunks own the mountains
But the mountains haven’t heard about it yet.
March maple-sugar and September apples
And a cave of honey the bees know,
And Hilda to think about them
Afterward. . . .