Older Than Mountains On gray days, these Pennsylvania back roads are Saturated with melancholy. Billboards and chain stores Exude the noxious stuff That clings close To abandoned shops, Broken hinges, roadside Garbage, rust red tractor In a weedy field, For Sale sign On a fence that needs Mending. It oozes Up from coal mines, Shafts of oil wells Long abandoned, hangs over Ancient mountains That show their age, Smudges what is left of summer Into low clouds with The beginning of Autumn, Mingles remnants Of an exhausted storm With a spent landscape That drifts toward Eisenhower highways Built to survive nuclear war But not this sadness Creeping into a restaurant With diners who gather Fragments of lives in stories Older than mountains. Published in Texas Review Volume 23 (1-2), Spring/Summer 2002. © 2002 Steven Schroeder Page maintained by Steven Schroeder | updated 27 april 2009