The Mountain Child Poem by Glen Chudley

In a land far from here, where it always is cold
And the sun all too rarely is seen in the sky,
Can be found a small village, timelessly old,
Nestled in at the base of the mountains so high.

For years its people went on with their lives,
Hidden away from the world all around,
Till a midwinter storm brought a fateful surprise:
At the foot of the mountain, a boy child was found.

They found him half buried in a snowdrift, alone.
He’d been there for days - he was terribly thin.
From the cruel winter wind he was chilled to the bone
And a deathly ash grey was the hue of his skin.

When they brought him back home, he was barely alive
And they thought that his fate had surely been sealed.
But, against all the odds, the foundling survived,
Showing almost no sign of his frightful ordeal.

The villagers wondered: what should they do
With the boy who had been through such hardship and strife?
Where had he come from? Nobody knew,
So the child became part of the villagers’ life.

And over the years he grew handsome and tall,
With his eyes a deep blue and his teeth white as pearl.
His courage and strength were the envy of all
And he was due to be wed to the blacksmith’s young girl.

But deep in his heart was a greater desire:
A feeling of longing, impossibly strong,
Which burned on inside him, hotter than fire,
To return to the mountains to which he belonged.

So, on the eve of his wedding, the boy ran away.
Took nothing at all, just slipped into the night.
When the villagers realised, it caused great dismay
And they set off in search at the very first light.

For hours and hours they followed his trail –
The hardiest men and their best hunting dogs –
But though they fought hard, they did not prevail:
They were forced to turn back by blizzards and fog.

In bitter defeat, they trudged back through the snow -
Never knew what became of that long-ago child.
But sometimes at night, when the mountain winds blow,
His voice comes to haunt them, the call of the wild.