Where Papaw Walked

I walk the old path along the ridge

where my papaw once walked.

🌿

I came here first as a child, small enough

that the hill felt wide and the climb long.

My papaw moved ahead of me then, slow and steady,

pausing sometimes to look across the far hills.

I remember little now,

his voice, the way he stood a while in one place,

as if the land held something worth studying.

🌿

I did not know then how brief those days would be.

When I was five years old my papaw died,

and the mountain seemed larger after that,

the years moving on while memory stayed small,

a few moments scattered along the mind’s path.

🌿

Still, I return to this ridge sometimes

and think of him walking this ground long before me,

his life given to these hills.

And it seems to me that memory settles into the land

and waits for those who come searching.

🌿

Now when evening spreads across the ridges

I stand a while, and feel my papaw here again

in the enduring life of this place,

and my heart grows calm in that knowing.