Love Poem: Mountains Between Now and Then
Paul Gardner Avatar
Written by: Paul Gardner

Mountains Between Now and Then

I've scrolled the pictures on my phone
Through racing days since curfew came,
Through restaurants, seascapes, flowering parks,
Like Eden lost beyond reclaim.

A memory came on my feed:
Three years ago, a pub with cats;
Your furry friend; a pint of beer;
Across the street a block of flats.

The towns are sitting silent now;
The shutters closed, the streets are bare,
And beer in cellars rots in peace,
And those who drank it gulp the air

On rounds of daily exercise.
Did shutdown stake its claim so fast?
Can mountains rear up at a word
Of order, and cut off the past?

The tracks that carry empty trains
Across the land where journeys end
At walls of mountains, make strange links
To Eden locked and found again.

The pictures tell their stories, tell
Of journeys that I made with you.
We stood our ground, and so we walked,
And through our steps the world was new.

And could words melt the mountain snow,
Or blaze a trail through unsafe ground,
To claim the garden that was lost,
The place where future past is found?