The Mountains Have A Memory Poem by Reshma Ramesh

A memory of silence, slow rain,
Of a damp violet, unwritten poems,
A shepherd’s call, the laziness of the falling snow,
And a wind taking birth among sleepy pines.

The mountains seem to have swallowed
The cry of every dawn, a soldier’s bones
And the distance between a falling leaf and the ground.
Yet they are calm as if you were absent

Like nothing has walked past their burning valleys
and no one has wept
Not even a black bird for her unborn child.

Sometimes, suddenly they come alive
The mountains breathe through wandering horse trails,
Wet honey bees and the faint bleat of a lamb.
No sooner they get quite like a cemetery
Than they drown their solitude in my tiny palms.

Perhaps someday they will wake up on my breasts
And remember that they too have a heart