The Wild Water Trail | Teen Ink

The Wild Water Trail

November 7, 2009
By Alexander Madzio BRONZE, Southport, Connecticut
Alexander Madzio BRONZE, Southport, Connecticut
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The Wild Water Trail

Part I

“By the grizzly beard and granite eyes”
It is a seasoned Mountaineer,
Lost, paralyzed in his tracks

The wild waters suffocate soft baby’s breath,
Next in line, the surge is met,
the fate is set.

Amidst strangled trees he crawls upward
He cannot faltter,
or hath he met his will to soon.

“The cold eyed Mountaineer merely slips”
Driving down the quirk in the trail,
deep below the mountains top.

Higher the surge presses,
Waves blocked the sun,
“the sea hath come”
Green the forest has become.

Part II

The North wind awoke
Out of the green she rose,
kissing frost bitten lips

The dim tangerine sky hung low in the mist
But never shone
Nor any given day came

Unattainable like the sea,
The warmth of her Brest was never certain

“Play smart in the painted trillium”
For the bears eat trees,
and it is there the sun rises

The rout stood in hellish mist,
The water rose, like witches dreams
Twisting, polymerizing in the undying gyre,

Titans moved in his wake,
Curling and furling over steep slopes
Cloaking any immediate danger.

He had seen this before,
The glazed rocks shimmered in the wind,

At first it seemed ice
But it plunged to rain,

The ravine turned out waterfalls.
And every chatter of crooked teeth,
Echoed in the soot abyss

Part III

Consciousness comes to the morning.
Of the faint foolhardiness,
from the pebble trampled steps of the cliff face
With muddy footprints ebbed in the cracks

Under the silver boulder lays he.
Black his finger tips have become
Silvered like the specks of mica in his granite eyes.

Throat parch’d and eyes glazed he staggered up,
The wind hath retired behind the mountains nose
Sunlight cleansed him of wet fatigue,
While it squeezed all sweat,
leaving him dry as can be.


This arid shell could not falter,
the fate lay around the ridge
Oh he now loathed the surf of the falls,

Alas, in the distance a dribble,
The trickle of steam colored life
grew louder as he approached,

Slowly from a mere dribble erupted a roar
The surf stayed course, and he helplessly ran,
Over spewed tree branches and moss covered rocks
Plunging deep into the surf,
Below,
Snow clung to his frizzled beard
Shutting his eyelids
And pursing his lips
There he sat and tossed around in the sand
There he found eternal peace
There he died,

Part IV


The seasoned past, and the earth grew tired
Rivers thawed and giants slumbered
But a Mountaineer was all that stayed
He stood on peaks, and watched his moonlight,
extinguish in fury of purple.

On shoulder perched an owl
With tethered feathers,
Matched his granite eyes,
And they sat in silence

Some say he died,
Others he moved away,
But I believe he still is up there,
living the true life of a man

The author's comments:
Wrote when I was on a hiking trip, the Appalachian Mountains really were inspirational

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