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In a chill November twilight As the day begins to lag I sit on stump by a deer-run With my thirty-forty Krag. And the sun slides down off the hill And the wind begins to blow To murmur the message that mornings light May see a tracking snow I peer through the dying daylight Deep through the thicket's gloom And I muse on my nations future With a sense of impending doom. And I pat the old gun on my lap A relic of times long past. When products made in this country Were products made to last. With its funny, sidebox magazine Its lines so stark and plain The basic infantry weapon When we fought the war with Spain And I think of the gifts we shall purchase As the Christmas Season nears How many of them will working After seventy years. I think of our plastic culture So slick and devoid of taste With its throw away false prosperity Afloat on a flood of waste. I think of what we have done to our land And it brings a twinge of pain They have taken the fields of my boyhood And I can't go back again. To that gaggle of cracker -- box houses And that mindless sigh that prates Of - " gracious country living " In Red Fox Hollow Estates. And I wonder what I can leave my kin That will do them any good. For one takes the vows of poverty When he dons the scholars hood. There are fifty-three stony acres (And I hope -- few unpaid bills) But there is one thing I must leave my kids, By God--they must have these hills! Not with the scars of progress With the topsoil scraped and piled And not as a sterile wilderness To remain "forever wild." And not as an artists colony Where the pseudo-rustics play. But I want them to have these Catskills About as they are today. With the short and explosive springtime Where the green peeks through the white And the trillium nods on the forest floor And the geese honk through the night. As the straggling V's head northward And cross before the moon Heading back to the nestling grounds Means summer's coming soon. Summer with warm and hazy days With children all at play And the fresh, clean odor that wafts aloft O'er fields of fresh -- cut hay. And the black on white of the Holsteins Where they graze by the tough hardback. Where the meadow crowds to the woodland And the forest nudges back. The blaze of autumn foliage-- No prettier sight in the world And then of a sudden the leaves all drop Brown and sere and curled. In the last warm Indian summer day When the last grasshoppers buzz On the rough --stacked rock rectangles That tell where a hill farm was. Then the white. Clean mantle of winter Where the tracks stand out so clear To tell the tale of the passing Of rabbit and fox and deer. This is the wealth that I treasure. These are the things that one day Must be left for you children to savor When I have gone my way. And perhaps the children will wander. As youngsters are wont to do. To see this planet's vastness As I would want them to do. The hills must remain for those who would stay And for those who will turn to the track That leads to the hills of their childhood As they come drifting back. One of the boys may come back again In a bright, clear autumn dawn, Back to the hills of his rearing When I have long since gone. He'll come to the dusty, unused den, See the old gun on the wall. And soft from the shadows of boyhood Will hear the ancient call. That beckons to take it down again Once more to know the thrill Of sneaking away through the dying day To drag one off the hill. And some chill November twilight As the day begins to lag He'll sit on a stump by a deer run with my 30-40 Krag. The author of this poem and his sons are all Krag collectors |