Partner, Remember the Hills?
By From the Scrapbook of Fred Harris | February 7, 2003Partner, remember the hills? The gray, barren, bleak old hills We knew so well. Not those gentle, placid slopes that swell In lazy undulations, lush and green. No: the real hills, the jagged crests, The sharp and sheer-cut pinnacles of earth That stand against the azure -- gaunt, serene, Careless of all out little worsts and bests, Our sorrow and our mirth. Partner, remember the hills? Those snow-crowned battlements of hills We loved of old. They stood so calm, so inscrutable and cold, Somehow it seemed they never cared at all For you or me, our fortune or our fall. And yet we felt their thrall And, ever and forever to the end, We shall not cease, my friend, To hear their call. Partner, remember the hills? The grim and massive majesty of hills That soared so far, Seeming, at night, to scrape against a star. Do you remember how we lay at night And watched the moonshine -- white Against the peaks all garlanded with snow While soft and low The night wind murmured in our ears -- And so We wrapped our blankets closer, looked again At those great, shadowy mountaintops, and then Sank gently to our deep And quiet sleep. Partner, remember the hills? The real hills, the true hills. Ah!